Page 17 - Delaware Lawyer - Summer 2020

Readers often remember
where an argument, idea or authority physically appeared in a paper
text. The lack of a tactile page
may mean that the screen reader has less recall of specific ideas, facts or arguments from a brief or motion.
tive documents to be read exclusively on a screen. To acquire the skills necessary to write more effective briefs and mo- tions for screen reading, you first need to understand how screen reading dif- fers from reading on paper. Addition- ally, understanding those differences will provide important insights on how to read competently when doing the research needed to write a motion or brief. In other words, by understand- ing how a judge will read your brief on a screen, you will better understand how you need to read the materials on a screen to prepare that brief.
So, our goal is to make you both a better writer, and a better reader. Achieving both goals will require you to change some old habits and develop some new ones. We’ll go through the differences and explain strategies for reading and writing to help you be-
come a better advocate.
The Drawbacks of Screen Reading
Nowadays, most people screen read something every day. Whether a quick check of social media or the perusal of a novel before bedtime, we regularly use digital devices to read. That is also true of documents we read for work. Because screen reading has become so prevalent, we may no longer recognize its potential drawbacks. This section highlights three drawbacks.
DRAWBACK #1: The F-Shape Approach and Skimming
Do you think that you read the same way regardless of the medium? Studies show otherwise. When reading on screens, our eyes do not go horizon- tally across the screen, reading from left to right, line-by-line. Instead, a screen reader’s eyes follow an “F” pat-
tern. The reader reads “a paragraph’s topic sentence fully (and horizontally) with diminishing returns farther down the paragraph.”5 In other words, infor- mation at the top of a screen and along the left edge is read; studies show some words elsewhere are not seen at all!6 Screen readers browse and skim; they do not focus on the words to the same degree they do with printed text — whether that is reading for work pur- poses or for personal purposes.7
DRAWBACK #2: Screens
Disorient Readers Used to Tactile Associations, Scrolling and Footnotes Exacerbate Disorientation, and Screens Inhibit Active Annotation
Miss the sensation of holding a book? That loss of physical sensation affects the reading process. Studies show significant impact from the loss of tactile experience.
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