On Legibility of Traditional and Simplified Chinese Characters

摘要

This study investigated the legibility of Chinese characters in the traditional and the simplified versions. One hundred commonly used simplified Chinese characters and their corresponding characters in the traditional version were tested for their minimum legible sizes (MLS) with the method of limits in ascending trials. Forty university students (20 males and 20 females) participated in the experiment. The main findings of the study can be summarized as follows. (1) The simplified version of Chinese characters has a higher legibility than the traditional version; (2) In both traditional and simplified Chinese characters, the number of strokes (NS) in a character is correlated positively to its MLS; (3) The slope of the regression of MLS by NS in the simplified character set is much steeper than the slopes of regressions in the traditional character set as well as the total set of all tested characters; (4) The female subjects tend to be more conservative than the males in making recognition decisions and hence result in higher MLS in the tested character set.