character density

English

Noun

character density (uncountable)

1. A measure of the number of characters that are represented in a specified unit of text stream.
   • 1982, R. A. Mccullough, A review and evaluation of the Langley Research Center's Scientific and Technical Information Program, page 81:

     The mean character density for the survey was 4060 characters per page. No recommendations on character density were found in the literature.

   • 1989, Craig K. Harmon, Russ Adams, Reading between the lines: an introduction to bar code technology, page 229:

     Assuming an inch as the given unit length of space and a character density of 5 cpi; a numeric coding structure of 10 characters has an information density of 10 to the 5th power, i.e., 100,000 units and an alphanumeric coding structure of 36 characters has an information density of 36 to the 5th power, i.e. 60,466,176 units.

   • 1996, Postal Bulletin, page 89:

     The printed destination line must have a minimum character height of 0.135 inch and a maximum character density of approximately 17 characters per inch.

   • 2008, D.A.Godse A.P.Godse, Microprocessor, Microcontroller & Applications, page 30:

     In RTU (Remote Terminal Unit) mode, each 8-bit byte in a message contains two 4-bit hexadecimal characters. The main advantage of this mode is that its greater character density allows better data throughput than ASCII for the same baud rate.

2. The number of strokes required to form a Chinese character.
   • 2014, ZhaoHong Han, Studies in Second Language Acquisition of Chinese, page 131:

     Based on the findings and research designs of relevant studies done in the past (cf. Jin, 2006; Ke, 1996; Ping, 2006; Xiao, 2002), the threshold of the character density in this study was set at 11 strokes.

   • 2017, Istvan Kecskes, Chaofen Sun, Key Issues in Chinese as a Second Language Research:

     With regards to this strand of research, Hayes (1987) finds that character recognition is independent of character density, whereas Chin (1973), whose data were collected from a different level of learning Chinese, reports the opposite.

   • 2018, Chuanren Ke, The Routledge Handbook of Chinese Second Language Acquisition:

     Three studies investigating the effects of character density on L2 Chinese character production found that the more strokes a character has, the more difficult it is to reproduce by hand (Ke, 1996a; L. Liu, 2008; Y. Xiao, 2002).