Abstract
Increasingly, the Internet is being seen as a vehicle for distance education. However, this medium presents new challenges for developers of distance education content. For example, do we read material on the Web the same way that we read from paper? Is there a different writing style for web-based information that facilitates on-line reading? This study explored four different writing styles in either a printed or on-line format. Examination of free recall from 80 undergraduates indicated that fewer idea units were correctly recalled for the concise writing style than the scannable, objective, and combined writing styles within the Web medium. In addition, in the paper format, more idea units were correctly recalled with the combined writing style than the scannable and objective writing styles. These results may be driven by the reading behavior associated with a distance education task. Possible limitations and suggestions for future research are provided.