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Why 18th century books looked like smartphone screens (2014)
- benbreen 11y agoThis is an interesting essay - I definitely think there's a lot to be learned about graphic design from 18th century print culture, especially people like William Hogarth with his "Line of Beauty." Incidentally, John Overholt, who offers up a comment excerpted at the end of the piece, is one of my favorite people to follow on Twitter. He's the curator of early modern books at Harvard's Houghton Library so it's basically a series of gems that he unearths in the stacks: https://twitter.com/john_overholt https://twitter.com/john_overholt
- avian 11y ago> The point being, of course, that the ergonomics of smartphones as reading devices are not only kind of rad, but historically so. You can also turn this around and say that smartphones throw away three centuries worth of ergonomic improvements in reading. I personally find smartphones completely unusable for any kind of longer text.
- pc86 11y ago> I personally find smartphones completely unusable for any kind of longer text. Literally two paragraphs after that he notes that historical authors didn't often write anything longer than a magazine article. So it makes sense that you wouldn't read a modern book on a smartphone, but blog posts are no problem.
- bryanlarsen 11y agoThe article's author read War and Peace, Middlemarch, and Moby Dick on his smartphone.
- drunken-serval 11y agoI've read entire novels on a TI-89. That doesn't make it an ideal format.
- mhurron 11y ago> I personally find smartphones completely unusable for any kind of longer text. I definitely prefer reading anything on my Surface (10") or previously the Nook (7"), or on my desktop if I'm there over the small phone screen.
- bryanlarsen 11y agoIn what way? In my opinion, a high resolution 5" AMOLED smartphone is superior to any other reading device including paper and e-paper, except for works that are diagram/table heavy, and for reading outside where glare becomes an issue. - AMOLED means perfect blacks, use white on black for nighttime reading - internally self illuminated for night time reading - light weight and lack of page turning allows wide variety in reading positions. The use of volume keys for page turning allows easy one hand operation, improving the number of positions available - narrow width eliminates horizontal eye scan. This is important -- most people do not read a word at a time, their brain processes an entire phrase at a time. If that phrase spans two lines, being able to focus your eyes on the end of one line and the beginning of the next at the same time significantly improves your ability to read the work quickly with full understanding.
- hsitz 11y agoIt's not just about how a single page looks. Even assuming that a nice backlit AMOLED is preferable to ink on paper in good light (which I'm not sure is true), physical books have pages that are easily turned, quick random access to different parts of book, and lots of subtle cues to reader about current location, etc. This is an advantage over ebooks. Ebooks can be digitally searched, which of course is an advantage for them. But it's hardly clear that any electronic reading experience is hands down superior to physical book in all situations. And if one were it would not likely be an ebook in a 5" form factor, that's too small. 5" is good for portability, but for sitting down in a chair at home for a 1 hour session, I can't imagine anyone preferring a 5" smartphone to a larger tablet. (I say all of this as someone who probably reads 40% on 4.5" smartphone, 30% on 13" laptop, 20% on 8" tablet, and 10% physical books.)
- ZeroGravitas 11y agoI've always liked that pleasant surprise you get when a novel finished "early" because there's a novella or preview of another book or something that comes after the main text, so that those "subtle clues" don't give you unwanted hints that you're near the end.
- rms_returns 11y agoI have a reasonably priced 7" ASUS Fonepad. It doubles up as my smart-phone too since my hands are large enough to easily hold it. Most importantly, it has a reading mode button (perhaps a feature of Android Kitkat itself) that dims the LCD and puts a yellowish haze, so its super-easy for reading. I personally spend several hours a day reading books on it.
- MikusR 11y agoOne major difference is that the printed book has hyphenation.
- aaronem 11y agoSome smartphone reader apps (e.g. Marvin, for iOS) provide automatic soft hyphenation, which neatly solves that problem without requiring any effort on the part of the publisher.
- Wevah 11y agoiBooks, as well.
- NoGravitas 11y agoFBReader on Android has decent hyphenation. Not TeX quality, but still pretty good.
- nsns 11y agoThe large font size might also relate to the unavailability of cheap mass-produced reading glasses, perhaps it was aimed at an educated older readership.
- ezy 11y agoOne difference, in the 18th century, they cared about the format. Now if only ebook publishers (a) hired proofreaders (b) could figure out how to properly render diagrams, specialized fonts and pictures such that reading an ebook containing such was anything other than a disappointment. I thought the "sloppy" era would be over by now as the technology and acceptance increased, but for whatever reason, ebooks still are given lesser priority than printed matter when it comes to editing and layout (and still are kind of a ripoff compared to the printed edition because of that).
- Florin_Andrei 11y agoCould it be due to the perception (loosely based in fact) that the hard copy is forever, and therefore you better do a good job first, whereas the electronic media could be corrected post-release?
- lukev 11y agoNo, it's because ebooks flow the text and images dynamically to accommodate different screen and font sizes whereas a book can be statically typeset.
- ezy 11y agoIf only there were a technology which was screen and font size agnostic that could display text interspersed with diagrams in various ways including alternative layouts.
- sandworm101 11y agoWrong title. Cart before horse. Should be: "Why Smartphone screens still look like 18th century books." When it comes to how to combine graphics and text, smartphones offer little new compared to thousands and thousands of years worth of artists and authors seeking to catch the eye of viewers.