Is Multiple-Column Online Text Better? It Depends! Summary: This
study investigated the effects of multi-column displays and
justification on reading performance and satisfaction of an
online narrative passage. Participants read a short story
displayed in one of six formats (one, two, or three columns, in
either a full or left-justified format). Results showed a
significant column x justification interaction with reading
speed significantly faster for the two-column full-justified
text than for one-column full-justified, and significantly
faster for one-column left-justified than for one-column full-
justified or three-column full-justified text. Post-hoc analyses
indicate that the faster readers may have benefited most from
the two-column justified format. Large high-resolution displays
can now have resolutions of over 1900 pixels, resulting in
extremely long lines of text. One way to resolve the problem of
very long text lines is to divide the text into multiple
columns, thus decreasing the width of each ind