# Reading path

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A '''reading path''' is a term used by [Gunther Kress](/source/Gunther_Kress) in ''[Literacy in the New Media Age](/source/Literacy_in_the_New_Media_Age)'' (2003).  According to Kress, a professor of English Education at the [University of London](/source/University_of_London), a reading path is the way that the [text](/source/writing), or text plus other features, can determine or order the way that we read it. In a [linear](/source/linear), written text, the reader makes sense of the text according to the arrangement of the words, both grammatically and syntactically. In such a reading path, there is a sequential time to the text. In contrast, with [non-linear](/source/Nonlinear_(arts)) text, such as the text found when [reading](/source/Screen_reading) a computer screen, where text is often combined with visual elements, the reading path is non-linear and non-sequential. Kress suggests that reading paths that contain visual images are more open to [interpretation](/source/Semantics) and the reader's construction of meaning. This is part of the "[semiotic](/source/semiotic) work" that we do as a reader.<ref > Kress, G. (2003).  Literacy in the new media age. New York: Routledge. page 57</ref>

==Linear reading path==

An example of a linear reading path might be a textbook, with pictures, or paragraphs where the reader is led to assume cause-and-effect sequences, for example. Speech is also a linear path because the path is more "set".<ref>Kress, G. (2003).  Literacy in the new media age. New York: Routledge. page 4</ref> according to Kress.

==Non-linear reading path==

An example of a non-linear reading path might be a text that has images alongside it. Kress argues that this different mode yields a different [affordance](/source/affordance); the visual image allows for open interpretation. A concrete example on paper might be a diagram such as a [flow chart](/source/flow_chart) or [graphic organizers](/source/graphic_organizers). In such multi-modal texts, the reading path is much less linear and more open to the reader's interpretation. 

The idea that reading paths differ according to evolving, emerging, multi-modal texts, are part of the New literacy studies, [visual rhetoric](/source/visual_rhetoric), and the concept of multiliteracies.

==References==
* Kress, G. (2003).  Literacy in the new media age. New York: Routledge.
<references />

==External links==

*[https://www.knowledgepresentation.org/BuildingTheFuture/Kress2/Kress2.html Reading Images, Multimodality, Representation, and New Media]
*[http://btrayner.info/multilits/ Multiliteracies for online learning]
*[https://journal.media-culture.org.au/0508/08-delaney.php Scanning the Front Pages]

Category:Human–computer interaction

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Adapted from the Wikipedia article [Reading path](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reading_path) by Wikipedia contributors ([contributor history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reading_path?action=history)). Available under [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Changes may have been made.