British people watch a lot of television. They are also reported to be the world's most dedicated home-video users. But this doesn't mean that they have given up reading. They are the world's third biggest newspaper buyers; only the Japanese and the Swedes buy more.

Each of the British papers can be characterized as belonging to one of two distinct categories: I mean "the quality press", or broadsheets, cater for the better educated and more serious readers; and "the popular press", or tabloids, sell to a much larger readership. They contain far less print than the broadsheets and far more pictures. They use larger headlines and write in a simpler style of English. While the broadsheets devote much space to politics and other "serious" news, the tabloids concentrate on "human interest" stories, which often means scandals and rumors. However, tabloids do not completely ignore scandal and rumors, or any other aspect of public life.

Both types of paper devote equal amount of attention to sport. But the difference between them is in the treatment of the topics they cover.

The reason that the quality newspapers are called broadsheets and the popular ones tabloids is because of their different shapes. The broadsheets are twice as large as the tabloids. It's a mystery why, in Britain, reading intelligent papers should need highly-developed skills of paper-folding! But it certainly seems to be the rule.

Tabloids usually have very large circulation and even bigger readership.