Devoted to Perfecting a Better Way to Read

"EA T AT

JOE'S PLACE"

That's what the Dallas billboard urged in large, bold letters. But for Robert B. Andrews, it was the medium more than the message that proved eye-opening -- and eye-relaxing.

He was a student editor at Southern Methodist University at the time of his epiphany, the late 1940s. He instantly realized that the configuration of the four words -- the first two stacked atop the last two -- represented an easier, more natural way to read.

He would come to believe that words clustered in smaller, more vertical columns, or "thought units" of three or four words, could be read as a whole, with a single eye fixation, and that it would make all the difference.

Andrews, 79, who died April 16 of pancreatic cancer at his home in Darnestown, never gave up on his reading concept, which he called "Square Span." It's only been in recent years, however, that innovative printing technology has allowed his vision to become reality.

Born in Dallas and a resident of Darnestown for more than 30 years, he first wrote about his reading concept in 1948 in a term paper for an English class at SMU.

He argued that it was time to improve upon the thin, single line of type stretching across a page, the accepted format since Johann Gutenberg invented the printing press more than 500 years ago.

Andrews contended that is an unnatural format because it forces a reader's eyes to ignore the tendency to see words above or below the single line. Clustering words, he insisted, would increase reading speed, reduce eyestrain and mimic the phasing of a reader's voice.

The term paper caught the attention of his professor, who helped him get it published in the January 1949 issue of Texas Outlook, a publication of the Texas State Teachers Association. A Reader's Digest version appeared in July 1949.