Reading and Writing the Electronic Book:WebWritingAndDesign

Reading and Writing the Electronic Book

- eBooks started a lot of controversy when they began -- people worried about compromising the nature of reading

I think I've been hearing about this debate from everyone from teachers to parents/other family members since elementary school -- everyone seems so worried that reading will "change too much" with the popularization of eBooks and eReaders

- the section about printing more documents and how we're actually reading less was very interesting, but I do agree with that
- are eBooks putting an end to reading in depth?
- I like the term "ludic engagement"
- "reading is about the content of the book, not the container" (p. 15)
- the assumptions of reading are self-explanatory, expected, and completely believable, until Marshall turns them around...

Krug also makes many assumptions about how people read on the web, but does not prove them to be false -- we are meant to accept them as truth (or at least close to the truth)

- the graph with active reading and immersive reading and the table with the reading types were both extremely interesting; I appreciated the examples and explanations Marshall provided

it's quite interesting to compare this to Krug; his thoughts on how people read were so different, and emphasized the differences for those reading on the web, while Marshall is arguing that they are not that different at all

- Marshall also mentioned the idea that some people believe they skim more while reading on-screen -- an idea that Krug definitely believes in and that we have discussed at length in class
- the differences between typography in print and digital documents -- emphasizes what I experienced with Diagrammatic Writing

Marshall asks, "... does layout have any bearing on actual reading performance?" (p. 22) to which I answer, yes, it does; especially in print documents, but I think it matters a bit in digital documents as well

- Marshall's thoughts and comparisons are so much more in-depth than Krug's -- even though Krug published a self-help book and Marshall published a scholarly work, the difference is still a bit shocking
- I appreciate that Marshall considers essentially all types of writing and is thorough while doing so, including literature, specifically the importance of layout for poetry; again, unlike Krug
- there are so many things about fonts that I was not aware of -- I knew a bit about Serif and Sans Serif fonts, and how Serif fonts are a bit easier to read, but it goes much deeper than I thought
- the comparison between laptop and mobile reading on page 34 was interesting as well

WebWritingAndDesign : ReadingAndWritingTheElectronicBookDMN

Reading and Writing the Electronic Book