Why we read slower on screens, and why that might be fine

For a decade the story was simple: paper wins. Study after study found that people remembered more of what they read on a page than on a screen, and the gap seemed to widen the longer the text became. The explanation most often offered was friction. A screen invites the eye to skim, to jump, to scroll ahead and come back, and every one of those small escapes costs a little comprehension.

What the newer research suggests is more interesting. The gap is not really between paper and glass. It is between reading that has been given a shape and reading that has not. A page has edges, a weight in the hand, a place on the shelf. A feed has none of those, and our memory seems to need them.

Giving the screen a shape again

The encouraging part is that shape can be designed. A fixed measure, a generous line height, a clear beginning and an obvious end: none of these are nostalgic flourishes. They are the scaffolding that lets a reader hold an argument in mind for longer than a paragraph.

Measure, leading and the sixty-six character line

Robert Bringhurst put the comfortable range for a single column at forty-five to seventy-five characters, with sixty-six as the ideal. It is one of the few typographic rules that has survived every change of medium, because it is really a rule about eyes, not about ink.

On the web the measure is usually set with a single declaration such as max-width: 66ch, which ties the column to the width of the typeface itself rather than to the screen.

Three adjustments worth making first

1. Set the measure before you touch the font size.
2. Raise the line height until the paragraph looks grey, not striped.
3. Add space between paragraphs or indent them, but never both.

A week without notifications

On a Monday in September I turned off every notification on my phone except calls from three people. The plan was to last seven days and write down what changed. What follows is the diary, lightly edited, and the one habit that stuck.

What I noticed

• The first two days were loud with phantom buzzing.
• By Wednesday I was reading whole chapters in one sitting.
• Nobody who mattered had trouble reaching me.

The habit that stuck is batching: I now open messages twice a day, the way I used to open the post. If you want to try it, the setup notes are here.

In praise of the footnote

Footnotes are the most honest part of a book. They are where an author admits that a sentence was more complicated than it looked, and hands you the complication to carry if you want it.

The web has never found a good home for them. Hover cards come close, the way a small note can open above a wordLike this one, set in the margin. without pulling you away from the line you were reading.

A small request

If you have a favourite footnote, from any book at all, send it in. We are collecting them for the winter issue.

From the mailbag

This month's question came from a reader in Tromsø, and it is one we get in some form nearly every week.

Write to us

Letters are read by a person, answered by the same person, and published only with permission.

The paper mills of the north

Four stops along a river that used to make most of the newsprint in Scandinavia, told in the words of the people who worked there.

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