Steps aside from conventional ideas about diagrams to examine how they work. Brings to bear ideas from a perceptual psychologist, a communication theorist, and a philosopher. Introduces the papers in this special issue as diagrams for worldmaking. (SR)

Examines an avant-garde illustrated book and suggests that "deviant" books urge a kind of reading that gives visibility to the text and seeks out relationships created between two volumes--the book and its words. (DF)

Perceptual processes of reading can be investigated meaningfully without having to make detailed statements about higher-level processing and about the nature of the interactions between downward flowing cognitive information and upward flowing information resulting from visual processing. (HOD)

Reports the findings of experiments that suggest that much of perception, even to high interpretive levels, is automatic and independent of intention or consciousness, and that the production of words in reading may involve problems that have nothing to do with articulation, even if the words have been identified. (GT)

Reconsiders the usual typologies of diagram presentations, questioning accepted taxonomies. Examines diagrammatic structures, revealing some hardened categories. Suggests that new discoveries can be made if questions are raised about how information is framed. (SR)

Describes the habits of human reasoning that distort designers' abilities to intuit how users will understand and respond to graphics. Advocates two solutions: investigating scientifically how visuals communicate to viewers, and using user-based iterative design to explore user's reactions while developing design prototypes. (SR)

Summarizes the problems with the title The Journal of Typographic Research and the reasons for its change to Visible Language. Reviews the role of writing, including vision, as the area of communication between the linguistic and graphic realms. (MB)

Reviews work on three areas of visual information that are available to readers: information provided by the conventional arrangements of the print on the page, by the features of each letter, and by the shapes of entire words. (HOD)

Human interactions are multimodal in nature. From simple to complex forms of transferal of information, human beings draw on a multiplicity of communicative modes, such as intonation and gaze, to make sense of everyday experiences. Likewise, the learning process, either within traditional classrooms or Virtual Learning Environments, is shaped by…

Examines the perception of components of written and spoken codes of human communication from a broad perspective in an attempt to identify possible similarities. (GT)

Reviews research in which children's processing of individual words is examined in prose context. When taken together, the data suggest that the reader's dependence on contextual constraint for individual word identification decreases with age. (HOD)