Monday, December 07, 2009

Saccading the web

I learned a lovely new word on Saturday, can’t imagine how I got to be this old without it.

Found it just trying to check that ‘grey among green’ the title of the John Fuller collection I was quoting from was not in its turn a quote which I had failed to recognise.

Short answer, no, but by pure chance Google led me to a scientific paper about visual search by Professor John Findlay which contained the word saccade.

The eye does not move continuously along a line of print in reading, but executes a regular alternation of rapid jumps, called saccades, and fixational pauses.”

I wonder what the eye does with a computer screen. And does it matter if you have your head up, or are looking down at a laptop? Experience tells me that it does.

In turn I thought we needed a word for these nice Google coincidences.

Googledent? – no, sounds like toothpaste.

Googlestance – that’s it, combines with happenstance.

But, of course, lots of other people have had the same idea


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