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"Our working memory can only hold 7 +/- 2 items, and we remember the first
and last items the best. Therefore, "see Figure 5, "The Creation of the
Earth" on page 123" is already at the limit of what most people can retain
in their short term memory."
<rant mood="cranky">
I'm having a hard time with "seven plus- or minus-two items" idea applied to
sentences. It's been discussed before on this list, I think. Here's what
makes me twitchy: The phrase "see Figure 5 on page 123" has fewer than 7
words, but you could argue that it also has 13 syllables, 19 alpha-numeric
characters, takes up 24 spaces...Or maybe it only consists of two items --
one that tells you which figure to see, and one that tells you where to find
it. I haven't read George Miller's original research, and I don't pretend to
understand memory, but unless someone can prove that those 7 "items" can be
anything more complex than A-Z or 0-9, shouldn't we leave the 7+/-2
criterion out of our writing decisions?
</rant>
