APPENDIX – IV
Correction factor
Units of space measurement. The standard unit of measurement adopted
in the study was one centimetre of body type containing four agate lines with
the column width of 25 ems (12 ems = 1 inch). The procedure in employing
this unit was to first measure the various news stories in a newspaper with
an ordinary centimetre rule. The news stories were measured and recorded
in column centimetres regardless of the size of type or width of the (single)
column. Subsequently, when the total length of space devoted for each
subject category in each newspaper under study was available in
centimetres, it was multiplied by a correction factor (k) to standardise the
column centimetres to be comparable among four newspapers. Since four
newspapers in the study had different widths of (single) column and
different body type, each newspaper had a different correction factor which
was obtained with the help of the following formulae:
K= w x L
---- ------ where
25 4x10
w = width of the column in ems
L = average number of lines of body type per 10 centimetres
In the study, all the four newspapers such as The Times of India,and
Hindustan Times had a column width of 4 inch which is equivalent to
20.4ems.
Next, in order to ascertain the average number of lines of body type per 10
centimetres, measurements were made in a number of inside pages where
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the typical conditions of type size and leading prevail. After obtaining the
total lines, the average lines per 10 centimetres were calculated. The
average lines varied from paper to paper on account of different body types
and widths. On an average, The Times of India and Hindustan Times had 32
lines per 10 cms while Amar Ujala 26 lines and per 10 cms.
The correction factor of each news paper was calculated with the formula
mentioned earlier. The steps involved are as follows:
The Times of India
w L 30 26
k = ------ X -------- = ------ X ------ = 1.2 x 0.65 = 0.78
25 4 x 10 25 40
Hindustan Times
20.4 30
------ X ------- = 0.81 x 0.75 = 0.61
25 40
Amar Ujala
20.4 23
------ X ------- = 0.81 x 0.57 = 0.46
25 40
Dainik Jagran
20.4 25
------ X ------- = 0.81 x 0.62 = 0.51
25 40
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