Writing online

[andrewducker]

Some of you may have noticed that when I'm writing here I tend to write in short paragraphs. Two sentences at most, if I remember. Heck, if I really want people's attention then each sentence gets its own line.

It's nice to be validated sometimes - which is why I was fascinated by this article on how we read online, and how to get people to pay attention. I'm not about to start bolding text, or putting in vast swathes of links, but it is interesting to see what works - and to notice it working on me.

Comments

[cheekbones3.livejournal.com]

Aye, I do often just skip entries with large paragraphs, unless I really want to read what that person's saying.

[pennski.livejournal.com]

Me too - and find myself thinking "Why didn't they put that behind a cut".

It does make me think about what should go in my work emails.

[pennski.livejournal.com]

Oh plus, I actively avoid any entry with more than 20 comments.

[andrewducker]

Gosh. I tend to assume that if everyone's talking about it it must be interesting!

[fire-sermon.livejournal.com]

Trying to convince people that there's a difference between reading online and offline is one of the major parts of my job.

It takes a huge amount of effort and persuasion to get people to understand that they can't just take the text of a booklet or other print document and whack it up online...

And then they wonder why people haven't read or understood it properly!

[snowking.livejournal.com]

tl;dr

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

I was going to say that :-D

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

Executive summary: people are lazy and don't like to read long things or well-constructed but lengthy sentences and/or paragraphs.

That said, I think I'm unusual because linking and tagging make me less likely to read something.

[sneakingyoda.livejournal.com]

What a neat article. I didn't realize that I've used a lot of those things already to make my blogs easier to read.

When I was writing long blogs, I would sometimes bold the subjects of a paragraph to make it easy to summarize the whole thing in a scan.

Those blogs got more comments too. Now I know why.

[sterlingspider.livejournal.com]

I try to do a lot of the same things, though for me most of the theory comes from a Jr HS journalism class.

In newspaper articles you top-load the information as much as possible so that even if the reader goes no farther then the first sentence they still have at least the most basic facts of the article. A good writer/editor will do this with the title.

The further you read the more detail (and typically less direct consequence) the information should have to the understanding of the story.

As much as possible I use the same theory when addressing groups out loud.