Bouma

{{Short description|Typography term}}

{{for|the surname|Bouma (surname)}}

In typography, a bouma ({{IPAc-en|ˈ|b|oʊ|m|ə}} {{respell|BOH|mə}}) is the shape of a cluster of letters, often a whole word. It is a reduction of "Bouma-shape", which was probably first used in Paul Saenger's 1997 book Space between Words: The Origins of Silent Reading, although Saenger himself attributes it to Insup & Maurice Martin Taylor. Its origin is in reference to hypotheses by the prominent vision researcher Herman Bouma, who studied the shapes and confusability of letters and letter strings.Bouma, H., (1971), "Visual Recognition of Isolated Lower-Case Letters", Vision Research, 11, 459-474.
- Bouma, H., (1973), "Visual Interference in the Parafoveal Recognition of Initial and Final Letters of Words", Vision Research, 13, 762-782.

Some typographers believe that, when reading, people can recognize words by deciphering boumas, not just individual letters, or that the shape of the word is related to readability and/or legibility. The claim is that this is a natural strategy for increasing reading efficiency. However, considerable study and experimentation by cognitive psychologists led to their general acceptance of a different, and largely contradictory, theory by the end of the 1980s: parallel letterwise recognition.Adams, M.J., (1979), "Models of word recognition", Cognitive Psychology, 11, 133-176.
- McClelland, J.L. & Johnson, J.C. (1977), "The role of familiar units in perception of words and nonwords", Perception and Psychophysics, 22, 249-261.
- Paap, K.R., Newsome, S.L., & Noel, R.W. (1984), "Word shape’s in poor shape for the race to the lexicon", Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 10, 413-428.
- Rayner, K. (1975), "The perceptual span and peripheral cues in reading", Cognitive Psychology, 7, 65-81. Since 2000, parallel letterwise recognition has been more evangelized to typographers by Microsoft's Dr Kevin Larson, via conference presentations and a widely read article.{{cite web|url=http://www.microsoft.com/typography/ctfonts/WordRecognition.aspx|title=The Science of Word Recognition|author=Kevin Larson|date=20 October 2017|publisher=Microsoft|accessdate=24 November 2019}} Nonetheless, ongoing research (starting from 2009) often supports the bouma model of reading.{{cite web|url=https://gumc.georgetown.edu/news/After-Learning-New-Words-Brain-Sees-Them-as-Pictures|title=After Learning New Words, Brain Sees Them As Pictures|author= Maximilian Riesenhuber|publisher=Georgetown University Medical Center|date=24 March 2015|accessdate=24 November 2019}}
- {{cite journal|url=http://www.jneurosci.org/content/jneuro/35/12/4965.full.pdf|title=Adding Words to the Brain's Visual Dictionary: Novel Word Learning Selectively Sharpens Orthographic Representations in the VWFA|author=Laurie S. Glezer, Judy Kim, Josh Rule, Xiong Jiang, and Maximilian Riesenhuber|journal=The Journal of Neuroscience|date=25 March 2015|volume=35|issue=12|pages=4965–4972|doi=10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4031-14.2015|pmid=25810526|pmc=4389595|accessdate=24 November 2019}}