Abstract: The strokes of the Chinese ideograms in printed sentences selected from recent newspapers were removed at various percentages in three different ways: (1) omitting the anterior strokes of the ideograms, (2) omitting the posterior strokes, and (3) omitting those which would not seriously change the configuration of the ideograms. College students were asked to reconstruct the removed strokes. The results indicated that the remaining strokes of the anterior part of the ideograms left by the second type of omission were easier to use than those of the posterior part left by the first type of omission, while those left by the third type of omission produced the best performance. The average subject, given limited time to work, was able to reconstruct the mutilated ideograms with 55% of the strokes omitted, while superior subjects, given unlimited time, were able to restore them as much as 73% of the strokes removed in a way of the three types combined together. From these results the lower bound on redundancy in terms of strokes for current newspaper Chinese adopting all the simplified ideograms is estimated to be about 78%. Implications of the findings for further simplification of the Chinese ideograms and for the design of more efficient and more simplified typewriters and printers are suggested.

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