I think I'm not understanding how skip works on 'seen text'. I expected it to work like this: First time through, nothing is skipped because you've seen none of it. Loading a save or starting a new game would mean any previously seen text is skipped automatically.



Instead, it seems I have to go into the menu and click on 'start skipping', and then I'm pretty sure it skipped a scene that I hadn't already seen, and I was forced to load a save and try again slower to read it.



Is there something I'm missing?

Yes it works as you said - will skip only text you have already seen previously, doesn't matter if you load a older savegame. Once you see a text, it skips it.