VOICES I screen, you screen, we all screen By Alex Beam, Globe Staff | June 19, 2009 The Boston Globe
Do we read differently on the computer screen from how we read on the printed page? It's an interesting question. Before hearing from the experts, let's review what we think we know. Even the best computer screens are harder on the eyes than the paper page is. Jakob Nielsen, a Web usability researcher, reports that we generally read 25 percent more slowly on the screen. I read more quickly on the screen and edit out about 40 percent of what appears before my eyes. If you haven't told me what you want by line four of your e-mail, trust me, I didn't get the message. A Norwegian researcher, Anne Mangen, recently weighed in with an interesting paper in the Journal of Research in Reading, asserting that screen reading and page reading are radically different. "The feeling of literally being in touch with the text is lost when your actions - clicking with the mouse, pointing on touch screens, or scrolling with keys or on touch pads - take place at a distance from the digital text, which is, somehow, somewhere inside the computer, the e-book, or the mobile phone,'' Mangen writes. Her conclusion: "Materiality matters. . . . One main effect of the intangibility of the digital text is that of making us read in a shallower, less focused way.'' ... http://www.boston.com/ae/media/articles/2009/06/19/paper_vs_computer_screen/ *********************************** * POST TO MEDIANEWS@ETSKYWARN.NET * *********************************** Medianews mailing list Medianews@etskywarn.net http://lists.etskywarn.net/mailman/listinfo/medianews
