On Lateral Reading

By Jeremiah Carter

Earlier this semester, while lesson planning for my composition course, I came across the term “reading laterally.” It is a combination of digital and informational reading. It refers to how fact-checkers read today, opening hyperlinks and new sources in real time, resulting in several open tabs at a time.

Lateral reading is potentially a more beneficial practice for new (first and second-year undergraduate) researchers as opposed to vertical reading (like scroll-based reading). For new researchers and casual readers, reading vertically can take longer for inconsistencies and issues of credibility to become evident. Yet acquiring the skill of lateral reading can be troublesome for the developing reader, battling distraction and growing their cognitive endurance.

Scholars and graduate students are familiar with research processes that involve dozens of open tabs and are keenly aware of how both productive and counterproductive this can be. Yet, this can become a source of frustration for first-year undergraduate readers. Sure, where “there is no struggle [frustration], there is no progress,” but this dilemma also highlights the need for more structured support, guided practice, and explicit instruction for young readers navigating an increasingly complex digital information landscape.

Strengthening students’ reading practices and understanding their development is especially important for those of us who hope to bring them from composition classrooms into African American literary studies, where reading requires sustained attention to voice, history, form, intertextuality, and cultural memory.

Related:

• Notes on Black Readers & Digital Culture