I have been copy editing and proofreading my new book (Slaying Goliath), which will be published by Knopf on January 21, 2020.
On July 12, I received the full manuscript from the Knopf’s copy editors. They had gone through it carefully and questioned words, sentences, facts, footnotes.
I spent a week reviewing their comments online, using track changes and answering their queries. They did a great job and caught some mistakes that I had missed.
After that week, I thought I had a complete manuscript.
I could have sent it back at that point, but I decided to print out the entire manuscript and read it on paper.
I spent another week reading the paper version, and it was as if I were reading a different book.
I saw sentences and paragraphs that were repetitive and could be deleted, and I deleted them.
I saw nuances of meaning that needed to be spelled out more clearly.
I saw ways that I could move paragraphs and sections so that the narrative would flow more smoothly.
I cannot explain why reading the print version was so very different from reading the online version.
But it was.
Is it the illusion of perfection that the online version gives? Is it something about cognition?
I really don’t know but I do know this: There is a difference.
If you are a writer and you want to get it right, if you want to make sure the meanings are what you intend, if you want to understand how the reader will perceive what you wrote, read it in print.
Then enter your corrections online and hit “Send.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
https://hechingerreport.org/evidence-increases-for-reading-on-paper-instead-of-screens/
I obviously can’t vouch for the “science,” but I tend to agree on a gut level. My problem is that I’ve gotten accustomed to large font sizes. So I do have trouble focusing on the text in most print books, whereas e-readers allow me to balloon the print up to large print format sizes. Still, reading on screens isn’t as good.
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My students BEG to read the material on paper rather than on computers. And yet, the district in which I teach wants us to do everything on computer. They want to go “paperless.” TOTALLY the opposite of what students need.
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I’m glad to know I’m not alone! I waste a lot of paper and printer ink but it’s the only way I can edit.
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I always had a sort of photographic memory. I could close my eyes and visualize a passage or a page number that I needed to reference. I could also gage where a passage was in a book that I was holding, simply by the number of pages between my fingers. I can’t do that with computer print/book and it’s very disorienting for me….it makes me think I have early dementia!! I prefer to read paper books and articles.
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I found that whenever it really counted, proofreading major papers or grading student work, I did a better job with the printed out version in front of me rather than reading on the computer and it wasn’t always due to a crick on my neck from bifocals. Just as Diane found out, I would miss important things that needed “fixing” with a paper copy in front of me.
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Your experience with print is not unique. Many people prefer books to screen reading. According to a recent study, reading from a page is a richer, deeper experience. It is easier for a reader to go back and reread salient points in a book than on a screen. Reading a book is a far more enjoyable, personal experience than reading on a screen.
“When reading long, linear, continuous texts over multiple pages that require a certain amount of concentration, referred to as “Deep Reading,” the reader often experiences better concentration and a greater overview when reading from a printed medium compared to a screen. When we are reading from a screen, only one section can be seen at a time and the available reading surface area is limited. If you read a printed medium such as a book, several text areas are available simultaneously and it feels easier to form an overview and make notes in the margins.” https://phys.org/news/2017-09-differently-paper-screen.html
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I have almost abandoned screen reading. I have a Kindle and I often download books that I can skim.
Also, I have learned that I have a serious problem about getting lost when I am reading online. I turn the page, only to discover that I turned 50 pages.
If I want to get deeply into a book, I want a physical book to hold in my hand.
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Same here, Diane. There is a difference. I tell my students to proofread in hard copy anything that is even close to high-stakes…and also to read it out loud. You catch a lot of errors and awkward phrasing that way, as well.
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Thanks, Mike. I am very used to writing online. I have done it for many years. Everything I post here was written online, no print outs. As readers often point out, I gloss over errors–spelling, syntax, missing words. It is easy to miss errors when everything looks fine.
When I printed out my manuscript, I was amazed to see how much I had missed, how much repetition there was, how easily I could shorten sections. None of that appeared to me online.
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I agree! People both read more deeply and write more powerfully in hard copy. Most of my colleagues understand this too. But, when it comes to teaching college students, many professors balk at requiring hard copy reading and writing. “That (digital text) is their world, and they need to learn to live in it.” Sad.
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The district in which I teach has told the English teachers that “it doesn’t matter” that there aren’t enough computers for each student when writing, because, “They all have a computer in their pocket.” That’s right–the district wants the students to write their essays ON THEIR PHONES.
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Same here! I have looked over at my daughter while riding in the car for after school sports and yelled at her for texting when I told her to do some homework. She was not texting at all, but writing a dreaded 5 paragraph essay…..on her phone!!
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I often write posts for the blog on my cell phone or iPad. That may be why I often make errors, because online everything looks okay. I am not opposed to it. But if you want careful editing, I find, you must read it printed out on paper. The flaws pop out in a way they don’t online.
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Writing on a phone is great for certain types of writing–text messages, Facebook and Twitter, and even blog posts (for those who know the pitfalls). But longer format writing requires space to get messy.
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The district??
Do you mean the adminimals of the district? Sounds like a good example of adminimal behavior.
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I’m the same way. Wonder if it will change for newer generations?
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For sure!
This has obvious implications for testing students online v. paper and pencil both with respect to comprehension and when students have write and especially when there is an option to do either; and when some kids have more experience with one or the other mode.
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My husband Funk (Mark Funkhouser) talks about your posts nearly every day. He’s a head person, and I’m a heart person, so my eyes usually glaze over when he’s saying something that he thinks is fun to tell me. Today, he actually forwarded me this post because he knew I’d resonate with it. Mr. Feminist actually MADE me print my manuscript and read it before it went to publication. I kicked and screamed, but since he usually never instructs me on anything, I thought I’d better listen. After reading the first fifty printed pages, I called my editor in tears and asked why she was letting me send this piece of sh*t into the universe. She assured me it was good and that I needed to push past it. That said, I, too, took the next few months making what I thought was already singing, really sing. Fingers crossed and legs uncrossed on the success with your new book!
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Thank you, Gloria. I appreciate Mark’s work too. Printing out my manuscript and reading it was a totally different experience from reading it online. I recommend it for every author or student.
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Just started reading May Cause Drowsiness!!! It’s freaking hilarious. What a great read. Thank you, Ms. Squitiro!!!
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The book reminded me of a line I read once, attributed to Luciano Pavarotti. He said, “Lots of people can sing as well as I do. The difference between me and them is that I am not afraid.” I hope he said this. It’s so good. Your book is FULL of lines that good.
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When I brought up the same concerns at a tech meeting in my former district, I was told it was because of my age and “kids” see it differently. Oh really?
Now they expect kids to write test based essays on cheap laptops that will be graded by a computer. The future is here and it is terrible.
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“Kids” see lots of things differently.” Students sometimes try to write papers on their phones, but I haven’t seen that work out too well!
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No, they expect kids to write on crappy PHONES to be graded by computer. That is even worse. I am constantly told that “kids these days” prefer to read on screens, but the vast majority of my students tell me differently. I teach grades 7-9.
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Hi, I’ve designed type, and so have some knowledge of what is going on. (Williams Caslon Text, https://store.typenetwork.com/fonts/?name=Williams%20Caslon%20Text)
On-screen type is now 96 dots per inch on a regular computer screen, and higher dpi, but much smaller (and so fewer dots per letter) on phone screens. A good laser printer is 1200 dots per inch, and commercial offset printing does text at twice that density. The greater sharpness of the type makes a huge difference to fatigue. My experience is that most people print out more than a few pages of electronic text. And proofreading is much better with the high resolution.
It is a mystery to me why this difference is not noted in articles such as the one you link. I will contact them as well. In any case, the differences you cite are quite real, and pretty much universally reported, that I can see.
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You are correct about the resolution of type faces and indeed the choice of fonts.
There may also be a generational difference between digital natives and those of us growing up with print on paper.
There are physiological differences between reading text on a screen that emits light and reading text on paper that is made possible by reflected light. In addition, when you read from paper you are physically moving sheets around and have other subtle kinesthetic, tactile, and spatial references for specific pages, those you have read before and those following the current page. And then there is the matter of corrective lenses, if any and how these may bear on how you hold your head and neck and degree of flexibility you have in reading.
A study was undertaken in 2013 with tenth-graders in Norway, where the students were divided into two groups. One group read two texts (1,400–2,000 words) in print and the other group read the same texts as PDFs on a computer screen.
In the reading comprehension test that was administered, the students who read on paper scored significantly better than those who read the texts digitally. It was easier for those who read on paper to remember what they had read. Mangen et al. say that this is because paper gives spatio-temporal markers while you read. Touching paper and turning pages aids the memory, making it easier to remember where you read something. Having to scroll on the computer screen makes remembering more difficult. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281482281_Screen_vs_paper_What_is_the_difference_for_reading_and_learning
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A couple of years ago, I looked for studies of tests taken online and tests taken using paper. Students did much better on the latter. I assume it is because it is easy to lose your place online, and hard to scroll up and down, as compared to eyeballing the paper.
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I disagree that “digital natives” prefer to read on screens. My students, with a few exceptions, tell me that they prefer to read on paper for extended periods. Some don’t want to read on screens AT ALL. And these are kids that grew up with smartphones and tablets and every other bell and whistle known to man. Keep in mind that I have nearly 300 students a year, so I have a pretty decent sample size.
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Laura, that paper, nor any of papers they refer to, even consider screen resolution as a factor. That’s my complaint. Instead they capriciously ascribe the better performance to habit, with no independent test. There’s just poor science going on.
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Excellent comment Mr. Berkson! I, too, have designed type (though I am far from a professional–this was a hobby I took up for a time, years ago), and your comment is spot on. And you are right that the science on this topic is terrible. I’ve read all of it I could lay my hands on, and I was underwhelmed.
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Thanks, Bob. I think the scientific community has been stuck on reading speed as the sole measure, so there hasn’t been real progress beyond what Luckiesh did in the late 1930s!
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From a few years back:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/reading-paper-screens/
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I think it is way too early to determine whether students reading or writing using computers is an overall positive or negative, much less for whom and under what conditions. The problem is that we are proceeding in highly consequential circumstances in ignorance as if it does not matter. This is influenced, unfortunately but not surprisingly, by a profit-influenced push to adopt costly technology, a dose of intellectual laziness, and tendency to ignore the affects on students with the least access to digital technology.
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I would like to see a poll that asks thousands of authors about which format (screen or paper) that they would chose for someone reading/experiencing their work for the first time.
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Paper reading, editing, proofing- works better for me and my students. The research is starting to show this, and I urge teachers, students, and parents to push back against screen reading and writing initiatives at schools.
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Been talking to people about what they prefer … online books or printed books. Many, like me, prefer print. Sometimes I think publishers use small fonts to frustrate us and push us towards online books.
Even the kids, preteens, and teens I speak with prefer printed books. Printed books have a FEEL to them unlike that screen. Like me, those with whom I have spoken from ALL WALKS of LIFE prefer taking a book with them to read rather than a device.
We are doing great harm when we take out the KINESTHETIC aspects of learning.
Think about the differences between looking at a FLAT screen and actually holding a book on one’s hands.
Also, I fear that great books will just go “POOF.” Then what? We know fascists love to burn books. I would rather see books burn and who burn them rather than open a device and find that nothing is there. POOF!
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I find the same is true. I think there may be a subliminal factor involved. The earliest “screens” we TV sets and each and every produced of TV content had the same goal … to forget what you just watched and remember what you were watching. In them old days, if you asked anyone what they watched last night, they wouldn’t answer “Well, at 6 pm I watched the news with …” They would jump to the highlight of their evening’s viewing “Did you see “I Love Lucy” last night?
All of that training has been amped up in this age of screen captures and click bait, etc.
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Diane My guess is that, if everything is online or in some form of electronics, an entire civilization can be “zapped” by a cyber bully or even by a natural physics event. Books . . . not so easy.
Also, BIG DIFFERENCE between copy-editing your book and changing content here and there. In either case, the evidence for the difference between screen and paper would be if you went back to the screen version more than once and found even more of either/or/both copy-editing and content changes.
In my experience (and for many other writers I have read about) our insights grow as we write and read, and read again, and so what we notice changes. That’s because our understanding self-builds and becomes more comprehensive of WHAT we are reading/writing (like when you notice redundancies you didn’t see before. That’s a good thing, but also can be “crazy-making” sometimes because it’s difficult to let the manuscript go to print precisely because you KNOW it could be better if we had another crack at it. Copy-editing too, not at all the same thing.
It’s not all bad. But the massive difference comes down to what it feels like–the distinct and concrete meaning of the experience–to hold a manuscript or a book or a piece of paper that you or someone else has written on . . . and holding a phone where everything, both bad and good, is seen through or written in that same little window that can be so easily passed over or “disappeared” and where it has no real place in the concrete world. We actually live in that world. I think it matters. As someone else here said above: “POOF.” CBK
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Diane, thanks for sending this out. I am a published author at Sage, University of Oklahoma Press and Roman and Littlefield. You are absolutely right about reading the printed word before it becomes the published word. Sharon Hartin Iorio
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Don’t forget, as if you could, the medium is the message, or at least an important message underlying all perception.
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One interesting thing is that this is not just about K-12 education.
Students at colleges often submit their papers on-line. Do the professors always print out those papers to read them before grading? I believe there is software where professors can make comments those papers on-line.
And nowadays instead of purchasing a very expensive textbook, a college student can “rent” an on-line version! (They can also “rent” a real book and send it back). Much cheaper. Any parent who has looked at the price of college textbooks these days — even used — starts to think renting textbooks on-line isn’t so bad.
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I teach college English, and I have handled papers in a variety of ways. 1. Hard copies: Students print them out and hand them in, and then I read them. I do not print out the papers myself. 2. Students submit online. Our LMS includes features for students to submit the paper, plus tools for commenting, etc. We can also upload our chosen rubrics for each paper and respond on the rubric, plus a final comment, plus comments on the “paper.” 3. Mac Plus (I think) allows you to use a stylus to comment in handwriting on papers turned in digitally! I’m not doing this yet, but I’m attracted to it because it combines digital submission with being able to write in my own handwriting, which is faster for me than the digital commenting tools, AND have a record of my comments (which I do not have if I comment on hard copies and hand them back). That was probably more info than you needed!
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Thank you – that’s very interesting. Given the topic of this post, do you feel there is a difference in how you are able to consider all aspects of submitted papers you only read on-line and those that you read the hard copy?
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Colleges and universities also have programs that detect plagiarism with comparisons with pretty-much everything that’s been published, as well as other papers submitted to the program. CBK
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Yes, I much prefer reading hard copy papers and writing comments on them. The tactile element helps me focus. Also, it is much easier for me to look back and forth and different aspects of the paper when I am holding a hard copy. For example, I like to compare first and last paragraphs because often (usually), a student will discover what they want to say by the end of the paper, and I will advise them to replace their first paragraph with their last one and revise the paper accordingly. I dislike using the commenting software in our LMS (“Speedgrader” I think it’s called). If the paper is very short (one page) and I am only assessing a few elements (thesis and grammar, for ex.) I can live with the digital experience. On the whole, though, I find the process of reading serious student work online very dehumanizing and “arm’s length.” of course, with more courses being taught online, for some people that is the only option.
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I’ve been spending a lot of time outdoors this summer, even more than usual. The weather has been gorgeous and it’s a real antidote to what was a somewhat trying school year locked up in an essentially hermetically sealed, climate controlled school building. (I can see how so many students suffer stuck indoors. Thank God my high school brought back recess after lunch following a short-lived plan to shoehorn in more study hall time back in 2011-2012.)
I was picking some big, fat blackberries yesterday evening on the way to taking a swim in a neighbor’s mountain pond. The pond was quiet and still except for the reflections of huge storm clouds traveling across the surface.
Funny thing is, you walk down the trail to the pond and see some good berries. Then, after taking a swim, you walk back up the trail and spot handfuls of delicious berries you didn’t even see before when you were going the opposite way.
It’s a matter of physical perspective, of course. When I pick blueberries on my own land I purposely look at the bushes from all possible vantage points….well, without climbing up above. But I’m tempted.
I guess this sort of thing carries over even to reading the printed word. I tend to sit and look dead on at the computer screen. Whereas papers often scatter about on the table. You can flip them over, feel the texture of the ink.
Once in a while I just sit there and marvel at students who have far better handwriting than mine. How can their hands be so steady, their printing so organized? It never was and never will be for me.
Then there was a 12th grader last year whose scrawl is as bad as mine. It made us both feel better, I think. It’s something shared in the physical world that we both inhabit. We’re both unintelligible at times and it’s only getting more difficult. In a world of clear, crisp fonts and bold, exploding colors, I sometimes open up my file cabinets and pull out papers I’d written decades ago, things I created for classes. And they just look shabby and rough. That was me. It is me. And, it’s not just my old age….the world has changed.
I don’t know….the forecast was for rain today but the sun is out now. It was a day I planned to stay indoors and work on pulling together a midterm exam and study guide and now I’m thinking about….blackberries.
Now, look what you’ve done.
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BTW Looking forward to seeing your book, Diane!
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Me too!
Loved your story about blackberries.
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What a lovely read, John!
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Thanks, Of course, you, my good friends on here, are always welcome to visit if you happen to be in this neck of the woods. (French Woods, NY, that is.)
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After taking a swim, you walk back up the trail and spot handfuls of delicious berries you didn’t even see before when you were going the opposite way.”
Maybe taking a shower and then reading a book backwards after the initial reading would have a similar effect.
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I always look for bears in blueberry patches, but that’s just me.
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Damn..or Dam, I should say. Reading forward is enough of a challenge sometimes. (I was one of those kids who had trouble learning to read, a phonics test case, circa the late 1960s. I was actually put in the principal’s car in 1st grade and taken to some sort of meeting at a school to show how I’d been assisted. Saved by phonics. Like on show. It made a big impression….BEING IN THE PRINCIPAL’S CAR, ha, ha. She was very imposing.) Yeah, bears. I like to see them. And, rattlesnakes, too. Also very imposing. My son was writing a news story about rattlesnakes a few years ago and we went LOOKING for them hiking up this cliff day after day. But it’s like the old saying about cops, you know, they’re never around when you need one. All we found was a shed skin. I did get a good workout that summer.
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I must say I’ve never looked for rattlesnakes, but saw many out west hiking around when I least expected them.
One time I was hiking back from the Colorado River in the grand canyon in the moonlight and nearly stepped on one.
Another time I was sitting on a rock, leaning g back on my hands and had one slither within inches of one hand. Needless to say, I did not move until it had gone by.
Another time I was hiking in Pima Canyon in Arizona and came around a bend in the trail to see a 6 foot diamondback coiled and rattling in the middle of the trail. Luckily it heard me coming and gave me a warning before I got to it.
Good fun!
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I’ve also come across several bears on my hikes out west, including one grizzly in Glacier that passed right below where I had just been on the trail a minute or two before. I did not even see it but there were people about a quarter mile back who saw it and told me a little later.
Not sure which I prefer, bears or rattlesnakes.
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I’ve faced rattlers, a black bear and a San Gabriel Mountains Bighorn Sheep but this one is big. I’m 6’2″ and we were face to face.
http://www.wrightwoodcalif.com/bighorn/
I ran into the bear on a trail and when I rounded a corner at the head of our group, it was there a few feet from me. Startled, the bear turned and ran full out up a slope that would have killed me if I’d moved at the same speed. It never slowed up. That mountainside was steep.
The rattlers were always crossing the trails we were on and ignored us except one time when one of our group decided to catch the rattler and chased it into the brush as it rattled its warnings that he ignored and retreated from him. Eventually, my friend gave up and the rattler vanished.
I met the Bighorn on the high side of what is called the Saddle at about 7,500 feet above sea level in the San Gabriels. It was on its way down. I was on my way up. We both froze and stared at each other. I could have reached out and touched it. I smiled and said I’d step behind the tree next to me so it could leave the trail without embarrassing itself, and I did. When I leaned out from behind the tree to see if it was still there, it was gone, vanished.
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I did see the grizzly, but only when I can back down the trail and by then it was about a quarter mile away.
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I’ve encountered black bears on the trail in Wyoming (Wind rivers), but as with your experience, they ran the other way.
Grizzlies are another story.
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With Grizzlies, you want to carry one of those large bear canisters that shoots pepper spray thirty feet, and also have a .50 caliber firearm as a backup.
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I have two kindle e-readers (in a box somewhere) and I haven’t used one in years. I stopped using them a long time ago and prefer printed books on paper. I also print out all my work on paper. I do a lot of editing and revisions on screen but the final go through is always on paper in addition to being read out loud so I can hear how it sounds.
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I share your experience with proofreading and revision. Sometimes I just need to see the configuration of words and paragraphs on a page.It is easier for me to see a text taking shape. As to books on line, we have turned to them because of the space problems in our home. We would have to build another house for the books. If I am having a shared reading experience,like a book club or a class text, I have learned to buy or borrow a paper book. It is so much easier to to move through the text. If you can’t underline, you can use post-its.
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I underline constantly.
I underline words I like
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If you <u>>underline constantly</u>> and you underline words you like, that must mean you underline and like all words.
But you did not underline anything above, which means you actually don’t underline constantly and also don’t like those words.
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For many years, I ran a publishing services company. I required my editors to print out pages and do substantive editing and copyediting on the hardcopy. Then the hardcopy was passed to our typesetting department, where the changes were keyed and proofread before the copy was released back to the editor. Many–especially my younger employees–strenuously objected. But I had learned the hard way that it was a mistake to rely solely on on-screen editing. That said, I occasionally, these days, do onscreen editing for friends, knowing that their work will then go through the whole editorial process at the publisher. Printing out all that hardcopy at home is time consuming and expensive, as I no longer own high-end, high-speed laser printers.
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Interestingly, and sadly, the same thing happens with first editions. A book will go through several stages of revision by the author, review by a substantive editor, more revision by the author, review of the revisions by the substantive editor, review by a copyeditor, and review by a proofreader, review of prepress electronic galleys by the author, and STILL, when people sit down with the first edition, they will see errors. I’ve witnessed this a thousand times in my years in publishing. It’s easier to see them in a printed book than in manuscript hardcopy. It’s easier to see them in manuscript hardcopy than online. I have no clue why this is true, but from long, long experience, I can tell you that it definitely is.
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Here’s a speculation about the reason for poor online copyediting: Copyeditors have to unlearn what all good readers do, which is to take in whole blocks of text at a time.
Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
Copyeditors have to reteach themselves to slow down and Look. At. Every. Word., every punctuation mark, every indent, every space, etc.
Reading hardcopy is easier on the eyes, and so they can spend more time in one place. I suspect that our eyes automatically saccade more when we are reading online, as an automatic protection against the eyestrain that comes from staring into brightness. And so, we tend to think that we attended closely to what we didn’t.
Cognitive psychologists: the definitive study of this issue of copyediting online versus on hard copy has not been done. I’ve seen a few studies, but they weren’t rigorous.
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Makes sense. What are you able to do for longer: look at trees or look at pictures of trees on a screen?
My middle school students are required to use pens most of the time. It’s a popular policy among parents and students. (I make exceptions in some rare cases when the occasional student prefers a keypad.) There is a record of their writing through a supervised editing and revising process. When they’re done, they can witness the difference and discuss it with their parents during conferences. Having a record is, I think, important to all writers, not just students.
Love this post and all the comments. Despise tech billionaires.
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And always beware the ‘delete’ button! And save your work every three seconds! I wonder how much writing has been accidentally deleted. I love that paper doesn’t get accidentally thrown away, and never crashes. The only problem with paper, when the dog ate it.
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I oversaw communications for two companies— for a combined 45 years. We insisted that — pre-publication — all documents be printed on paper and edited/proof-read in that form, no matter how many edits had been done electronically.
The phenomenon you describe is not atypical at all. One’s eyes and mind engage with words and sentences (and, subsequently, their meaning) differently when seen paper than when viewed on a computer screen.
In my experience, we almost always found typos or other issues in need of correction when doing a final paper read.
I also find that I read The Times, for example, differently in its newspaper form than in its online form. Not only is meaning absorbed differently, syntax is often clearer when the formation of the elements of a sentence are displayed on paper.
Somehow one’s senses are slowed through the mental interpretive process of decoding that which is displayed in print.
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This is a deep subject that needs a lot more study than it has received. I’ve read what’s been done, and it’s been done poorly and without deep reflection or high-quality research design. The tools exist to do this well. Some enterprising psychology PhD student should take this up.
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As a writing/reading teacher for 5 decades, this is not news to me. Also, when. we write on paper, we access a different. part of our brain. Most writers know this, and find that journaling on paper offers a different kind of language and construction then one gets from writing on a computer. I know that I say things differently, when I write on paper.
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The screen is repainted 30 times per second so even though the eye may not notice, the brain definitely interacts with this flickering effect. In any case, the batteries never die on hard-copy.
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Reading online/texting/etc. is bad for your eyes and your posture, bone structure/growth, etc. There was just an article about this in the health section in one of the Chicago papers, whereby doctors were interviewed.
And…this has also led to really poor editing…in the daily papers. My husband (he was a Communications major in college) & I read 2 dailies together, as well as other papers (local, the WSJ, etc.), & we both agree that the editing has become so poor. I always told my middle school students who had difficulty writing to say the words they were writing aloud; the use of eye-hand-motor coordination & spoken word translated into some pretty good essays, delighting the students (who really believed that they “couldn’t” write).
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Journalist staffs are bare bones now thanks to online news aggregators who pay NOTHING (thanks, Huff Post), and publishers have also cut staff a lot, and it shows. I have almost never read a book free of typos and obvious errors in grammar and usage (Dan Brown’s are a regular encyclopedia of those, and of cliches). https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2019/03/18/the-idiocracy-is-upon-us-or-dan-brown-and-the-art-of-how-not-to-write-a-novel/
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&, see, I just goofed up couldn’t, which I had wanted to boldface, not put in quotation marks! Proof!
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That’s a mighty bold statement, don’t you think?
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I think it might depend on how one processes information.
I think the same people who find it easier to read hard copy books might also find it easier to read a hard copy map rather than the digital version.
Something about being able to see “the whole picture” rather than just snippets at one time.
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I miss hardcopy maps. Waze and Google tell me where to go but they never give the larger geographic context.
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Agreed! My son who always uses GPS knows where he’s going but doesn’t know where he IS.
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On Waze there is an ‘overview’ option, so you can see the whole route against the map.
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The Waze overview does not take the place of a paper map that shows all the streets and their names. Waze doesn’t do that h less you reduce the scale so minutely that you lose the big picture.
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If people read differently in print and in the e version, perhaps it is best to produce two versions of the book, one that will be read in print and the other that will be read in Kindle.
And of course, one that will be read on Twitter:
Graffiti high up on the wall
Says “Schools are not a business”
“But public good for one and all”
Though some have clearly missed this
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Of course, many of today’s authors write only on Twitter.
Some day the Nobel committee will undoubtedly give someone a Prize for that.
The Nobel Prize in Twitterature
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Nobel Prize in Twitterature
I can not tell you lies
I’ve got a Nobel Prize
A prize in Twitterature
Important, to be sure
Awarded for my tweets
My literary feats
The deepest of the deep
When most are fast asleep
So Dylan, eat your heart
I’m really off the chart
With tweets that rule the day
What more is there to say?
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— Donald Trump’s Twitterature Prize acceptance speech
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Did he tweet it?
Was his acceptance speech 140 characters?
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Should prolly be
Awarded for my tweets
My Twitterary feats
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Nice….twitterature
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His acceptance speech exceeds the original 140 character limit, but I believe its less than the current limit of 280.
Thank God for small favors.
But I didn’t count, just estimated.
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The microblogging novel first became, I think, a thing in Japan. It’s now metastasizing around the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microblogging_novel
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Paper v. Screens: Column size, font size, concentration, and bright lights!
Try this little experiment.
Read an article in the paper (you know, a REAL newspaper) and read the same one online.
Then
Read a longer article in the paper – and the same one online HOWEVER EXPAND your browser so the lines cover most of the screen.
Column width matters.
And, if you are in schools, watch kids’ eyes when they read a book and when they are reading on a computer or iPad.
Concentration matters. As does touching the page.
And, the kicker for all the wrong reasons – watch kids take a standardized test on a screen. The columns are too wide (yes, I know, some adjust but do we) – the fonts are too small (sometimes we can adjust them) – and the bright light.
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My students complained A LOT about this. For their ELA exams, they typically had to have two or three screens open. Complicated. A lot of issues just with navigating the $@&$@&!@&#@ things!
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Right–the navigation in & of itself is a test. That’s why computer testing is a crock. Sensory overload!!! I know that I’d be hard-pressed to answer ??? correctly, what with all the navigation required.
& then, of course, that’s when kids give up, & just click on any old answer.
& schools are deemed “failures” (& are closed/replaced w/charters) for this.
This was the ALEC plan all along…
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We were still using those Scan-Tron bubble answer sheets instead of computers for the annual high stakes high school test in California back before I retired in 2005. I had one student who finished the three-hour test in less than 10-minutes. He bubbled in all the “C” answers and then turned the answer sheet over and took a nap.
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I completely agree. I love paper copies. I taught first and I’m now third. I am teaching my students to use dictionaries, theasurus, and other reference books. My students love it. At home, I have a library in my living room. There is no substitute for books.
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Thank you!
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