Invisible Writing: Investigating Cognitive Processes in Composition.

James Britton has insisted that this feature of composing, scanning, is an essential dimension of the cognitive processing that takes place when a competent writer is engaged in all but the simplest of writing tasks. Writers need to scan, according to Britton, in order to make alterations in their progressing text and to retain control over their emerging ideas.2 To test the importance of scanning, Britton and three of his colleagues in the London Institute Project on Written Language tried writing without scanning, using worn-out ball-point pens: