Another psychological effect of reading from a screen, being a luminous object, is that we do not criticize the information we read from it as we would from a reflective surface. In his book ‘ The Elements of Typography’ Robert Bringhurst(1992) writes a poetic explanation about this effect;
"And we read the screen the way we read the sky: in quick sweeps, guessing at the weather from the changing shapes of clouds. We look to it for clues and revelations more than wisdom. This makes it an attractive place for the open storage of pulverized information - names, dates, library call numbers for instance - but not so good a place for thoughtful text."
(p. 192-193)
The information we find in the sky is more clues then facts. There can be a dark cloud in the sky but it does not always have to mean it will start raining. We can tell the time by the position of the sun, though not on the minute precisely. Because our brain compares the screen to the sky, it does not look at the information detailed, but is more trying to find the bigger picture. And even the bigger picture will not be reliable enough to be sure if it is going to rain or not.
While you are writing on a computer, you are not actually reading what you wrote. You are just typing the words, not really analyzing what you just produced. Your brain does not focus on the screen because it is scared of the pain it will evoke to your eyes, and does not criticize your text in a detailed way due to the assumption that it is just looking for clues, not for facts. This explains why people do not recognize the spelling mistakes in their text, or do not understand their writing style. It’s all about the lack of focus.
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