Corporate & Securities Law

Reading PDF-Only Publications: On-Screen or Printout?

By Ken Adams

My forthcoming work “The Structure of M&A Contracts” will be a PDF-only West publication. That raises an obvious question: will people be reading it on-screen, or will they read a printout?

If I get my wish-list, the PDF will contain hyperlinks to cited authorities, the text will be hyperlinked to the endnotes and vice-versa, and all cross-references will be hyperlinked. That would add a measure of convenience to on-screen reading.

On the other hand, the text sure won’t be light reading, and it will roll in at about 80 to 90 pages. I’m willing to credit that as a general matter reading something lengthy on-screen is more tiring and slower than reading the same thing in paper form and is likely to result in a more superficial understanding.

But there’s on-screen reading and on-screen reading. Reading something on an iPad is presumably more like reading it on paper than is sitting at a desk gazing at a monitor a foot away from your face.

The literature on reading on-screen versus reading paper is vast. Click here for just one item, a recent article in PCWorld.

So if you were to purchase “The Structure of M&A Contracts,” would you read it on-screen or would you read a printout? Take the handy poll below. How people are likely to read it may influence design of the PDF, although some of the design suggestions offered by D.C. Toedt are probably a bit too assertive for our needs. And if you have any suggestions, I’d be pleased to hear them.

Full post as published by AdamsDrafting on July 25, 2010 (boomark / email).