摘要：PO RTUG UES Enewspapers, as many other European newspapers, are be-coming increasingly visual. Even in the so-called quality newspapersprinted pages look less dense than they used to be, have less text, more pho-tos and colours and their front page layouts are organised according to thevisual logic of the screen. In spite of this movement towards the visual, oneof the features that it still is a sign of the difference between a quality paperand a popular one is the predominance of written text. However, the verbalelement has been transformed into display, meaning that also language hasbecome, largely, visual. These changes in newspapers layout are not mereformal changes. They imply new ways of combining the written text withvisual components and new forms of semiotic organisation that in.uence theway newspapers are read and that contribute to create new kinds of readers.According to Kress and Van Leeuwen (1998), many newspapers layouts donot prescribe a clear sequence of reading or a reading path to their readers,and this relative openness of newspapers layout gives the reader the possi-bility of choosing a strategy of reading. Age is one of the factors that mayexplain this choice, as differences of age imply variations on reading prac-tices and habits, and therefore different dispositions towards the newspaperpages (Kress, 2003: 165). Those who have been trained by the screen may bedisposed to read a relatively less open page – as the ones of quality newspa-pers, when compared to the tabloids' – according to the principles of the visuallogic; and the opposite might happen: those who have been socialised into theolder forms of textual organisation have to deal with tabloid newspapers.
