What is incomplete blinking, and why does it matter?
Short answer
An incomplete blink is one where the upper lid comes down but doesn’t meet the lower one. They are more common at screens: 7.0% of blinks against 4.3% on paper (Chu, 2014). A partial blink leaves part of the eye uncovered, and in a small study tear film stability followed blink quality more than blink count (Hirota, 2013).
What counts as incomplete
In a complete blink the upper lid comes all the way down and meets the lower lid, then lifts again. In an incomplete, or partial, blink it turns back before it gets there, leaving a strip of the eye’s lower surface uncovered.
Studies don’t all draw the line in the same place, or measure it the same way. That is one reason their numbers vary so much, and why figures from different papers are hard to compare.
How common they are at screens
In Chu, Rosenfield and Portello’s study, 25 people read the same text for 20 minutes on a monitor and on paper. Blink rates were similar, but 7.0% of blinks were incomplete on the screen against 4.3% on paper. Argilés and colleagues tested 50 people in six reading conditions: all of them lowered blink rate, and only reading on a tablet or computer raised the share of incomplete blinks.
People differ widely. In a 2013 study of 21 people reading on a computer for 15 minutes, the share of incomplete blinks ranged from 0.9% to 56.5%, with an average of 16.1%. Fast games may add to it: Cardona and colleagues found more incomplete blinks during dynamic computer games, though a 2025 study of casual gamers found no difference between game genres or compared with rest.
Why the tear film cares
Each blink spreads a fresh tear film over the eye. McMonnies’ 2007 review notes that for the lower part of the cornea, an incomplete blink roughly doubles the time until the next wipe, and that gap grows as blink rate falls during reading and computer work. The tear film there has longer to thin and evaporate.
Hirota and colleagues watched 11 people play a computer game for an hour. Their total blink rate barely changed, but tear film stability rose and fell with the mix of complete and incomplete blinks. The authors concluded that the tear film stays stable as long as almost all blinks are complete. It was a small study, and whether incomplete blinks cause the discomfort people feel isn’t settled: Portello and colleagues found more symptoms in people with more incomplete blinks, while Chu and colleagues found no such link.
How to blink fully
The aim is simple: let the lids meet. Practising full blinks is a way to make them a habit. In a 2025 Aston University study, the routine that worked best was close, squeeze, open, 15 times, three times a day, and symptoms eased while people kept it up and went back to where they started within two weeks of stopping.
An earlier study by Kim and colleagues had people with dry eye symptoms do a 10-second blink exercise every 20 minutes for four weeks. In the 41 who finished, incomplete blinks fell from 54% to 34%, though without a control group it can’t rule out other causes. Portello and colleagues suggest that aiming for full blinks may help more than simply blinking more often.
How to blink fully
- Close your eyes as you would in a normal blink, and let the lids touch.
- Rest there for a moment, then open.
- Now and then, add a gentle squeeze before you open.
- Tie it to a cue: a reminder, the end of a paragraph, a page loading.
- If your eyes stay dry, sore or red, see an optometrist or eye doctor.
BlinkPause’s cue is a pair of soft eyelids that close a little over the page every minute, a nudge to blink fully. It also offers a guided squeeze set three times a day. It’s a reminder, not a medical device.
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Sources
- Chu, Rosenfield and Portello (2014), Blink patterns: reading from a computer screen versus hard copy
- Argilés et al. (2015), Blink rate and incomplete blinks in six different controlled hard-copy and electronic reading conditions
- Portello, Rosenfield and Chu (2013), Blink rate, incomplete blinks and computer vision syndrome
- Cardona et al. (2011), Blink rate, blink amplitude, and tear film integrity during dynamic visual display terminal tasks
- Argilés, Cardona and Valentino (2025), Characterization of eye blink parameters during high and low-dynamic scenes in different video game genres
- McMonnies (2007), Incomplete blinking: exposure keratopathy, lid wiper epitheliopathy, dry eye, refractive surgery, and dry contact lenses
- Hirota et al. (2013), Effect of incomplete blinking on tear film stability
- Aston University (2025), on Wolffsohn et al., Optimisation of blinking exercises for dry eye disease
- Kim et al. (2021), Therapeutic benefits of blinking exercises in dry eye disease (no control group)
This page explains research for general interest. It isn’t medical advice, and BlinkPause is a reminder, not a medical device.