New and old business Posted by Douglas on November 16, 1999 at 09:01:04:
Hi everyone:
I should like to deal with the new business first. I was reminded by a recent e-mail to Sally that Pauline hasn’t been heard from for a
couple of months. Coach, should we sent out a cyber search party or do you, or anyone one else that may have heard from her, have
reason to believe that we should let her be? As the temperatures drop to near 32 degrees here in Ontario, I can here air conditioners
whirling to life in Australia.
Next, I want to bring up a resentment that I have let smoulder for too long. It didn’t seem relevant given the precarious future of the
site itself.
Coach, you wrote in “Who started the fight on the playground”, a posting, that mercifully I shall never have to return to again,:
> Hi again Suz: I can’t help but think: "What an unlikely pair!"
“What about that time? I wonder if you were impacted when he said that, Suz? A buzzer went off for me, when I saw that. Was I
reading too much into it when I thought that was a Con-Artist line? "What’s an intellectual like me doing hanging around with a non-
intellectual like you?"
Was I reading too much into it! The presumption was perverse. I may be absolutely deaf to the tone of the preceding two postings that
sparked that comment but even upon re-reading they still sound to me dichotomous: pessimism/optimism, low spirits/high spirits,
depression/elation. Admittedly, on the one hand, I to not suffer Suz’s “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm” role gracefully, and I wish she
would throw out her copy of Norman Vincent Peale’s “The Power of Positive Thinking”. On the other hand, I think it is fair to say, she
does not patiently suffer my Professorial stance, gladly, with its incessant citations, quotations, or academic style in general, and as for
my books, perhaps, they would be useful to start the fire and as for my library cards, they should be revoked for my own good.
Temperamentally, we are an unlikely pair; intelligence has nothing to do with it. Just the other day she signed off to shoe a horse. I have
never ridden a horse!
Don’t presume too much, Coach, and, please, don’t put words in my mouth; there is hardly enough room left given that both feet usually
reside there.
Now, I alluded to “citations, quotations, and my academic style in general” for a reason as I have an apology to make to John, in
particular, since I took his comments as a personal attack and to you, my classmates, for trying your patience more often than not.
This all started back in July when the Coach wrote (“John. “On not feeling the negative feelings.” TTMT 07/17/1999.”):
“When you are posting next time, I wonder if you would try something once. In your personal comments (apart from quotations of
teachers) would you see if you can avoid saying things in a round-about way, albeit a clever, maybe brilliant round-about way? Would you
see if you can say what you say, straight out, as simply and clearly as possible, without leaving us having to guess or figure out what you
mean?”
My reaction here was beyond resentment and if I had owned a scanner, the Coach would have received a copy of every degree that I
possess in the English Language and Literature plus all two hundred pages and more of my thesis, my university record, my work record,
and my curriculum vitae for good measure.
How dare he!
Not owning a scanner, I resorted to going on a month long rant on the Blackboard until John called a truce.
It is now time to eat humble pie.
I subscribe to a web service called Netsurfer and, over the past few months, they have been reviewing articles, in their educational
supplement, with titles such as: “Citing Electronic Resources” and “How to Write for the Web”. I have download these articles and have
been perusing them at my leisure. What has become obvious is that my style is quite inappropriate for this medium.
By way of example, I would ask you to read the following:
Writing for the Web
Jakob Nielsen
Be Succinct! (Writing for the Web)
The three main guidelines for writing for the Web are:
* Be succinct: write no more than 50% of the text you would have used in a hardcopy publication.
* Write for scannability: don't require users to read long continuous blocks of text.
* Use hypertext to split up long information into multiple pages.
Short Texts
Reading from computer screens is about 25% slower than reading from paper. Even users who don't know this human factors research
usually say that they feel unpleasant when reading online text. As a result, people don't want to read a lot of text from computer
screens: you should write 50% less text and not just 25% less since it's not only a matter of reading speed but also a matter of feeling
good. We also know that users don't like to scroll: one more reason to keep pages short.
The screen readability problem will be solved in the future, since screens with 300 dpi resolution have been invented and have been found
to have as good readability as paper. High-resolution screens are currently too expensive (high-end monitors in commercial use have
about 110 dpi), but will be available in a few years and common ten years from now.
Scannability
Because it is so painful to read text on computer screens and because the online experience seems to foster some amount of
impatience, users tend not to read streams of text fully. Instead, users scan text and pick out keywords, sentences, and paragraphs of
interest while skipping over those parts of the text they care less about.
Skimming instead of reading is a fact of the Web and has been confirmed by countless usability studies. Webwriters have to
acknowledge this fact and write for scannability:
* Structure articles with two or even three levels of headlines (a general page heading plus subheads — and sub-sub-heads when
appropriate). Nested headings also facilitate access for blind users with screenreaders.
* Use meaningful rather than "cute" headings (i.e., reading a heading should tell the user what the page or section is about).
* Use highlighting and emphasis to make important words catch the user's eye. Coloured text can also be used for emphasis, and
hypertext anchors stand out by virtue of being blue and underlined
Hypertext Structure
Make text short without sacrificing depth of content by splitting the information up into multiple nodes connected by hypertext links.
Each page can be brief and yet the full hyperspace can contain much more information than would be feasible in a printed article. Long
and detailed background information can be relegated to secondary pages; similarly, information of interest to a minority of readers
can be made available through a link without penalizing those readers who don't want it.
Hypertext should not be used to segment a long linear story into multiple pages: having to download several segments slows down reading
and makes printing more difficult. Proper hypertext structure is not a single flow "continued on page 2"; instead split the information
into coherent chunks that each focus on a certain topic. The guiding principle should be to allow readers to select those topics they
care about and only download those pages. In other words, the hypertext structure should be based on an audience analysis.
Each hypertext page should be written according to the "inverse pyramid" principle and start with a short conclusion so that users can
get the gist of the page even if they don't read all of it.
finis
In the spirit of the piece, I shall refrain from quoting any more passages. The relevant articles can be found at (unfortunately,
Netscape Communicator doesn’t appear to allow Hypertext links in e-mail):
http://www.useit.com/papers/webwriting/
I would suggest that everyone have a look at the site and the appropriate papers as I am not the only one whose style could be described
as idiosyncratic and in need of improvement. To make a suggestion, retrieve a copy of one of your longer postings and see how it stands
up to scrutiny based on the criteria cited in the above article. Should it pass, fine, end of discussion; should it fail, you know where to
look.
Thank you
Douglas
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Archived February 13, 2000