Abstract Emissive screens are generally believed to be the main reason for eye fatigue when reading text on displays. This study examines the impact on eye fatigue of the reading style and medium: reflective or emissive. We test three media: paper, LCD (liquid crystal display with backlight), and electronic paper (book reader using electrophoretic reflective display). Eye fatigue levels in a reading task are evaluated under two reading styles (free condition and fixed condition) for the three media by measuring the increment in near point distances after each reading task. Subjects were requested to read a novel for 180 min using the three media. The fixed reading condition yielded a statistically significant increase of the near point distance on the three media, while the free condition showed no such increment, regardless of the medium.