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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