thanks for writing back…… do you think this new word SCREENING,
for reading on screens, might catch on around the world, in English? I
feel that READING is reading on paper, and I love that best of
all….but i also like SCREENING to get new info and read
emails….but I feel it is a different kind of reading, so i coined
the world SCREENING using the old word of screen, and adding ING to
it. Nothing new under the sun. But good idea or bad idea? I want to
use this word to help people THINK about how the two different reading
modes are so DIFFERENT, and maybe need separate words to describe
them. Most people disagree with me, but I am determined to push this
word forward, just to highlight how different the two reading modes
are. But of course, reading is still reading. yes

SMILE

Danny in Taiwan

DANNY

Do we need a new word for the new kind of “reading” we do on screens?

by Danny Bloom

TAIPEI, TAIWAN — Are you reading this press release — or — are you
screening this? How you answer
this question will determine whether you get to the bottom of this
news release.

Alex Beam, writing in the Boston Globe on June 19, fired the first
volley in this now-national
discussion. “Do we read differently on the computer screen from how we
read on the
printed page?” Beam asked rhetorically. His column was headlined by a
savvy Globe copyeditor: “I screen, you screen, we all screen.”

The answer to Beam’s question is, of course, yes. From most of the
research that has come in so
far from academics in
North America and Europe, the answer is clear, although not everyone’s
in agreement with what it all means.

Yes, screening has multiple meanings. We screen movies, we screen job
candidates, we screen
patients for medical problems, we do a lot of “screening” in this
world of ours. And now, you will be hearing a lot about a new kind of
“screening” — so-called reading on plastic, pixelated screens.

Dr. Anne Mangen at the
University of Stavanger in Norway tells us what she thinks about the word
“screening” for reading on a screen: “My first
impression is that the term ’screening’ is adequate in some
respects, but not in others. It’s adequate to the extent that it
points to certain differences in the reading mode which has to do with
the display nature, the central bias of a screen compared to a page of
print text (our gaze is naturally oriented towards the center), and
the image-like character of modalities (we tend to read a screen
spatially, in contrast to the page which we linearly).”

Dr Mangen, in a published academic paper published in Britain last
December, listed a few reasons that reading on paper
and reading on a screen are two very different animals.

* Reading on a screen is not as rewarding — or effective — as
reading printed words on paper.

* The process of reading on a screen involves so much physical
manipulation of the
computer that it interferes with our ability to focus on and
appreciate what we’re reading.

* Online text moves up and down the
screen and lacks physical dimension, robbing us of a feeling of
completeness.

* The visual happenings on a compter screen and our physical interaction
with the entire device and its set ip can be distracting. All of these things
tax human cognition and concentration in a way that a book or
newspaper or magazine does not.

* The experience of reading a book or a newspaper or a magazine is
both a story experience and a tactile one.

The jury’s still out on just how different reading on paper is
from reading on a screen, but the public discussions in the blogsphere
are getting interesting — and heated. But more and more, top experts
in the computer and Internet fields, as well as typeface designers and
readability gurus, are in agreement that we need a new word
for reading on screens, and that the word should be “screening.” For
now. A completely new word might come down the information highway in
the future and take the place of screening. But for now, you screen, I
screen, we all screen.

We asked Kevin Kelly, the well-respected maverick of Wired magazine,
what he felt about this
new word for reading on screens, he told us by email in one short sentence: “I
would be happy to see screening become a verb (for this).”

Mim Harrison, a book editor in Florida with Levenger Press, said: “I find the
distinction between reading and screening to be intriguing, and it
certainly gives us all pause to consider just what it is we’re doing
with our eyeballs these days.”

“Screening, of course, is not a new term,” a top expert in predicting
the future told us in a recent email, but this might just be the
time that it catches on in the way you suggest. Screening is a clever
and useful term capturing the fact that the
experience of reading on a screen is fundamentally different from reading
on paper. Not a priori worse or better; just different.”

And then he added this important note: “It is the right word for the
moment in terms of drawing people’s attention to the vast literary
shift about to wash over us.”

When we asked technology reporter John Markoff at the New York Times
about this idea, he replied in a one-word email note: “Hmmmmmmm.”

We asked David Pogue at the New York Times the same question, and he
said: “Very interesting.”

————————–

Danny Bloom is a freelance writer based in Taiwan. He blogs at
Zippy1300. Opinions expressed in guest posts are those of their
authors, and don’t necessarily reflect the views of staff.

I agree that the reading experience on a screen is generally quite
different from what it is with a book. However, if we should change
our vocabulary each time a word takes a different meaning, we would
have various dozens of words just for naming the different modes of
reading in the history of humanity. Two thousand years ago, people
read on scrolls, with no space between words : they had to read aloud
in order to understand. Imagine that ! As a proof, we have a text by
Augustine around 380 telling how he was surprised when he met a
scholar who was reading silently : it was a completely new experience
for him. When “silent reading” began the default mode of reading some
700 years later, the verb did not change but the epithet was dropped,
and we now have to add a precision when we speak about “reading
aloud”. You will find more on that topic in my book From papyrus to
Hypertext (University of Illinois Press, 2009).

I find interesting the comparison Anne Mangen makes between reading on
paper and reading on screen. But all printed texts are created equal
nor read alike. We do not read a newspaper the same way we read a
book: we usually scan the newspaper looking for a title that would
catch our interest and then we may decide to read the article at
length or just the first paragraph. Some historians call this kind of
reading “extensive reading” in order to differentiate it from the
“intensive reading” required by a book.

For my part, I would suggest that reading on screen is oriented toward
action: people click, copy and paste, make bookmarks, jump from one
place to another one in order to check the veracity of an affirmation,
vote on the interest of a particular text, and interact with the
author. I call that mode “ergative reading” (from the Greek “ergon”:
work). It has been practised by writers, historians and researchers in
general since a long time ago, but today it is becoming the default
mode for most people.

The reading of books should not disappear but it will be a secondary
mode and as such more difficult to adopt if it has not been properly
practised in school. We can however expect that progress in the
technology will make reading on screen more convenient thanks to
legible fonts (Clear Type was an important step), new monitors, a
greater usability in the design of browsers and a way of writing more
adapted to the changing habits of readers.