Abstract
One aspect of cloze methodology that has received little systematic attention concerns the blanks that remain when the passage is mutilated. Taylor (1953) stated that the deleted word should be replaced by a line of a standard length. The standard length was recommended to avoid giving the subjects information on word length, i.e., the number of letters on the deleted words. The standard length line has since been general practice in cloze research, as shown by many studies.
Anderson (1971), however, compared standard-length blanks and exact-length blanks (same length as the deleted words) on three English language passages of differing levels of difficulty. Spooncer (1974) compared a standard-length blank and a blank the size of the deleted word. No significant differences were found between scores when using the two variations. This experiment was designed to examine more closely the effects of word length cues on cloze scores.