Print versus Digital: The Effect of Format on Performance in Editing Text

As of today, our knowledge on the nature of digital reading and of the comparison between print and digital reading, is very limited. Most recent studies focus on digital reading under passive conditions, in which text comprehension is tested, without asking the reader to "act" on the text by editing, recognizing or correcting errors and improving the text's quality. In light of the present-days increase in situations that require active digital textreading in learning (e.g. grading students works or reviewing papers and books), there is a growing importance in shedding light on the comparison between print and digital reading under active conditions. In this pioneering study, we examined the active-reading abilities of students, who were asked to read, edit, recognize errors and improve the quality of short articles, in a print and in a digital format. Surprisingly, and in contrast to the common reported findings from print versus digital reading studies, no significant differences were found between the performances of participants in the two formats. A similar no-difference was found for all text-errors categories, as well as for gender differences. We found that digital readers completed their tasks earlier than the print readers, but their performance was not lower. We suggest that the absence of significant differences between print and digital formats indicates that digital reading becomes an everyday practice among users, who gain digital reading proficiency. This process, of closing the gap between print and digital readers is reported in recent literature.