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So You Think You're Reading - No Dear You're Screening

February 16, 2009

"Reading" online will never be the same! -- "Screening" enters the online vocabulary.

Do you "screen" news online, or do you "read" news in print newspapers? -- A new word has been coined to refer to reading information online, changing the way we take in information

by staff writer

NEW YORK (RUSHPRNEWS)02/16/09 -- What you are doing now is not reading, but "screening." Yes, you are at this very moment screening the text printed digitally on this computer screen. You are not reading text on a paper surface; you are "screening" this article through the lens of the computer screen in front of you. A new word is born -- screening!

When a top computer industry writer at the New York Times was told about this new term, he told RushPRnews in a one-word email note:"Hmmmmmmm."

Screening? Can anyone just coin a new word and make it stick? No, but new words are coined every day, and some stick and some don't. Time will tell whether or not "screening" (to mean "reading information on a computer screen, as distinct from reading a print newspaper or magazine or book") will stay with us or not. For now, the word has been accepted by the editors at urbandictionary.com and is listed here:

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=screening

Screening is defined as: "To read text on a computer screen, cellphone screen, Kindle screen or PDA screen or BlackBerry screen; replaces the term "reading" which now only refers to reading print text on paper."
Example: "I hate reading print newspapers now. I do all my screening online."

The word is so new, not everyone has seen it yet. And many do not agree with its coinage.
Amit Gilboa, an Israeli writer living in Singapore, told RushPRnews: "No, it's still reading. Whether in a book, a print newspaper, chalkboard, whiteboard, it's still reading words made up of letters.
Screening is still reading."

However, Hidetoshi Abe in Tokyo, Japan, told this reporter he likes the new term and agrees it fits our new Internet age. "I think 'screening' makes perfect sense to represent the way we now take in information via computer screens. It's a whole new ballgame."

Reading, of course, is a complex cognitive process of decoding symbols printed on a paper surface for the purpose of deriving meaning (reading comprehension) and/or constructing meaning, according to scholars.

Written information on a printed page is received by the retina, processed by the primary visual cortex, and interpreted in Wernicke's area.

But when we "read" online (or "screen", in the new coinage), the digitalized information is processed in a different way. Reading online is the same thing as reading on a paper surface in a book or magazine or newspaper.

Reading on a print paper surface is a means of language acquisition, of communication, and of sharing information and ideas. Screening on the Internet is a horse of a different color.

Readers of print paper texts use a variety of reading strategies to assist with decoding (to translate symbols into sounds or visual representations of language), and comprehension. Screening online uses other strategies, and the information is processed by our brains in a different way as well.

Reading text on print paper is now an important way for the general population in many societies to access information and make meaning.
However, a new form of reading, called "screening" now takes place when a person "reads" text on a computer screen or PDA screen or cellphone screen. This form of reading, now called "screening", is a very different form of communcation.

You have just "screened" your very first article online using this new term. You are now an Internet screener. Congratulations, and welcome to this amazing new world.

Comments are more than welcome, pro and con.

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