And I quote:
Neither is the primary act of scanning the page with our eyes a continuous, systematic process. It is usually assumed that, when we are reading, our eyes travel smoothly, without interruptions, along the lines of a page, and that, when we are reading Western writing, for instance, our eyes go from left to right. This isn't so. A century ago, the French opthalmologist Emile Javal discovered that our eyes actually jump about the page; these jumps or saccades take place three of four times per second... The speed of the eye's motion across the page - but not the motion itself - interferes with perception, and it is only during the brief pause between movements that we actually 'read'.
From
A History of Reading , lauded by me in Info and Announcements...
So meandereading is a pretty good description, really.
