As with spoken language, written language is always used for a purpose. People read a text     1    they think that it will enable them to find answers to questions that they are interested in answering. People write to express an     2    or to give information to particular readers. There are, of course, many different purposes for reading and writing and different purposes will     3    different reading and writing styles.
    In general, written language is structurally more "correct" than spoken language. It has clear word and sentence     4    and its information is more densely packed. More is said in     5    words. However, written language also contains both structural and contextual redundancy and this can help readers to     6    the text.
    Written language is often structurally more     7    than spoken language. This is because when people write they have     8    to think about what they want to write and are able to     9    to what they have written and revise it as often as they wish. This greater structural complexity is one factor that may make a text     10    to understand.
    When people read in their first language, they do not usually read every word in the text. Readers     11    their eyes across and down the text stopping at groups of words (fixations) to check for meaning. The speed with which people read     12    their purpose for reading and on how     13    a range of possible meanings their brain has to choose from at every fixation.     14    readers use the structural and contextual redundancy of the language, their     15    of what they have already read and the general knowledge they already have to     16    what will come next, and so     17    the number of possible choices that the brain has to consider at any fixation.
    Both writers, when choosing how to express their     18    meaning for the audience that they have in mind,     19    readers, when interpreting writers' meaning, rely not only on their linguistic knowledge, but     20    their general knowledge of the context in which they are reading and writing. Such knowledge, whether specifically linguistic or contextual, is stored in the long-text memory.