Aesthetics of Text: Handwritten vs. Print
Since I was not able to personally experience the shift from hand-written books to printed books, I can only liken the impact to the shift from printed book to e-book. I found myself incredibly resistant to anything e-book; they just weren’t tangible enough! I preferred the actual act of flipping pages, smelling the musty-old-book smell as I read, and being able to read the book wherever, whenever. E-books proved to be limiting in that I had to be sure it was fully charged and couldn’t read in the full sun due to glare (the Kindle has fixed this issue now). E-books were such a change in reading technology that they took away what I believe to be the essentials of a book. Over the years I have definitely changed my tune due to the convenience and portability of multiple books at once, and of course the necessity to adopt a technology that drives this graduate program, but I still do prefer to read a paper over a hunk of metal and electronics.
Reading text on an electronic screen changed the way that I interacted with the text. Even the smallest differences, such as moving my eyes down the page from line to line as opposed to scrolling through the page, or being drawn into the subtle book-design choices such as frayed pages or paper color, influence my reading experience.
Relating this to the shift from hand-written books to printed books, I would assume similar feelings of inadequacy. Before books became mass-produced by the efficiency of the printing press and movable type, “books were handmade objects, treasured as works of art and as symbols of enduring knowledge” (Dept. Medieval Art, 2000). The reader was aware that the book was one-of-a-kind, embellished by illustrations or filigrees, which added to the character and identify of the text. Even the reading experience prior to the codex demonstrated vast differences in the reader’s interaction with the text. Text on scrolls allowed readers to view the entire document as a whole, with a beginning, middle, and end. If a reader were to want to refer to a specific section of the text, the only reference points would be in regards to the distance from the beginning or end of the text, or in regards to the illustrated embellishments. The adoption of the codex allowed readers easier reference, but also served to break up the text into small, abrupt pieces. As I reflect on which I’d rather, continuous text or broken-up codex, I would have to say the latter because it’s what I’m used to. However, I think in a different time I would have similarly become used to the continuous scroll of text and its ability to draw me into the text without multiple pause points (to flip a page).
The aesthetics of text, such as font, paper, colour, the continuity of text, convenience, and accessibility, play a large role in my ability to relate to the text as well as the concepts being discussed.
References
Department of Medieval Art and The Cloisters. “The Art of the Book in the Middle Ages”. In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/book/hd_book.htm
The addition of e-books to the reading repertoire has been an interesting transformation. They have defiantly improved but I think there are some refinements to go. Personally I enjoy a combination of the two methods. I liked your comparison with the other shifts in print. As you mentioned, each change effected the interaction between people and books. It will be interesting to see if printed books will be replaced or if e-books will augment our reading choices.
There are often comments about school-age readers of digital media being easily distracted.
Albeit hyperlinks are an open invitation to distraction, and advertising elements on webpages are ridiculously arresting, I wonder if the reader’s age has anything to do with ‘distractibility’..
I have been trained over many decades to notice non-text elements in a book (e.g. photos, diagrams, index) but not let them distract me. Likewise, I don’t jump ahead to random pages just because they are there; I move through the text linearly because I know I won’t have the best literary experience unless I do. Those years of knowing how to read carries over to reading digital text. I can selectively attend to text in a digital reading space (like this webpage) and therefore receive the message.
It seems that digital natives have not had the exposure to linear text outside the web to know how to read to get meaning. Perhaps the ‘distractibility’ is a result of this lack of linear reading experience combined with the ‘invitation to explore’ nature of a hypertext-based network and also GUI design (the degree to which text gets dominant focus on a webpage). For sure, those same digital natives can easily extract meaning from a short digital AV clip and not get distracted in the process!
I am enjoying your comments particularly the comments regarding the use of digital text .This has been a concern at our school, because of our work with low vision students. The production of large print (LP) text books is becoming prohibitive and publishers are less willing to allow our Alternate Format Library permission to enlarge their publications. This means that staff is encouraging students with low vision to use digital text and electronic textbooks. Digital text is also more practical in classrooms because students are not carrying multiple volumes of over-sized textbooks into the class.
I am concerned that the students do not know how to read digital textbooks properly. When I was a student, I remember reviewing the table of contents, glossary and appendixes in our text books during the first week of school. I am not sure that teachers spend time explaining the components of digital text the same way. We often assume that the students know how to use this type of media, because they are tech savvy. Students with low vision can flip through social media posts at record speed. If they read their digital text books in the same manner, will they really understand the layers of text and plethora of available resources that are linked to their electronic textbooks? I think that this is an area that is worthy of further investigation.