Is the Kindle the Next Big Thing?

Is the Kindle the Next Big Thing?
According to Farhad Manjoo at Salon, no: Amazon's Kindle won't spark your e-book fire. But it's a very interesting description of a gadget that's almost got it right.

According to Farhad Manjoo at Salon, no: Amazon's Kindle won't spark your e-book fire. But it's a very interesting description of a gadget that's almost got it right.

Hazards of Online Writing
Via the New York Times: E-Mail Is Easy to Write (and to Misread). Much of the article applies, I suspect, to web text as well. Excerpt (but read the whole article and follow the links): The advantage of a phone call or a drop-by over e-mail is clearly greatest when there is trouble at hand. But there are ways in which e-mail may subtly encourage such trouble in the first...

Via the New York Times: E-Mail Is Easy to Write (and to Misread). Much of the article applies, I suspect, to web text as well. Excerpt (but read the whole article and follow the links):

The advantage of a phone call or a drop-by over e-mail is clearly greatest when there is trouble at hand. But there are ways in which e-mail may subtly encourage such trouble in the first place.

This is becoming more apparent with the emergence of social neuroscience, the study of what happens in the brains of people as they interact. New findings have uncovered a design flaw at the interface where the brain encounters a computer screen: there are no online channels for the multiple signals the brain uses to calibrate emotions.

Face-to-face interaction, by contrast, is information-rich. We interpret what people say to us not only from their tone and facial expressions, but also from their body language and pacing, as well as their synchronization with what we do and say.

Most crucially, the brain’s social circuitry mimics in our neurons what’s happening in the other person’s brain, keeping us on the same wavelength emotionally. This neural dance creates an instant rapport that arises from an enormous number of parallel information processors, all working instantaneously and out of our awareness.

In contrast to a phone call or talking in person, e-mail can be emotionally impoverished when it comes to nonverbal messages that add nuance and valence to our words. The typed words are denuded of the rich emotional context we convey in person or over the phone.

Can You Make a Living Writing Web Content?
An email arrived recently: I want to make a living writing content for websites. I have spent the past few decades raising children and working as an elementary school teacher. Teaching just isn't working for me anymore and I intend to return to university in several years for a completely different kind of degree. In the meantime, however, I am a single mother with one ten-year-old still in the nest....

An email arrived recently:
I want to make a living writing content for websites. I have spent the past few decades raising children and working as an elementary school teacher. Teaching just isn't working for me anymore and I intend to return to university in several years for a completely different kind of degree. In the meantime, however, I am a single mother with one ten-year-old still in the nest. What do you think are the most important things for me to focus on and do in order to become a financially successful online writer?

I explained that I've been in a fortunate situation, making a living from teaching while exploring webwriting as a sideline. What I've learned has improved my teaching, but I haven't had to pay the groceries out of my webwriting income.

So I'll turn the question over to people who drop in here. What makes for a successful career as an online writer?

Bloggers suffer government repression
It won't be news to most of us, but Reporters sans frontières can quantify it in their Annual Worldwide Press Freedom Index - 2007: Saying online what you think can get you in big trouble. Excerpt: Government repression no longer ignores bloggers The Internet is occupying more and more space in the breakdown of press freedom violations. Several countries fell in the ranking this year because of serious, repeated violations...

It won't be news to most of us, but Reporters sans frontières can quantify it in their Annual Worldwide Press Freedom Index - 2007: Saying online what you think can get you in big trouble. Excerpt:

Government repression no longer ignores bloggers

The Internet is occupying more and more space in the breakdown of press freedom violations. Several countries fell in the ranking this year because of serious, repeated violations of the free flow of online news and information.

In Malaysia (124th), Thailand (135th), Vietnam (162nd) and Egypt (146th), for example, bloggers were arrested and news websites were closed or made inaccessible.

“We are concerned about the increase in cases of online censorship,” Reporters Without Borders said.

“More and more governments have realised that the Internet can play a key role in the fight for democracy and they are establishing new methods of censoring it. The governments of repressive countries are now targeting bloggers and online journalists as forcefully as journalists in the traditional media.”

At least 64 persons are currently imprisoned worldwide because of what they posted on the Internet. China maintains its leadership in this form of repression, with a total of 50 cyber-dissidents in prison.

Eight are being held in Vietnam. A young man known as Kareem Amer was sentenced to four years in prison in Egypt for blog posts criticising the president and Islamist control of the country’s universities.

We in the West can't congratulate ourselves. Canada ranks only 18th in press freedom, and the US comes in at a forlorn 48th.

Clichés of Journalese
If you write for print or electronic media, some of these terms will make you wince, because you've probably used them: Journalese-English Dictionary (first edition). Most are British, and a little unfamiliar to North Americans, but we have plenty. Our public figures don't just promise to do something: they vow to do it. The cliché du jour (to use a cliché) in North America's blogosphere is "nuanced." Whether it's Obama,...

If you write for print or electronic media, some of these terms will make you wince, because you've probably used them: Journalese-English Dictionary (first edition).

Most are British, and a little unfamiliar to North Americans, but we have plenty. Our public figures don't just promise to do something: they vow to do it.

The cliché du jour (to use a cliché) in North America's blogosphere is "nuanced." Whether it's Obama, Clinton, or McCain, whatever they say is nuanced.

On Foggy Writing
Dave Wood wrote to me the other day: I was somewhat aghast at finding one of my web pages coming in at a fog reading of 15+ - I'm just in the middle of revamping it now and am determined to have an index below 9. I did find a glitch in a site you'd recommended: Readability.info. It wasn't accepting my files and seemed to convert them to a read-only...

Dave Wood wrote to me the other day:

I was somewhat aghast at finding one of my web pages coming in at a fog reading of 15+ - I'm just in the middle of revamping it now and am determined to have an index below 9.

I did find a glitch in a site you'd recommended: Readability.info. It wasn't accepting my files and seemed to convert them to a read-only in my own files. I had to re-start the computer to get rid of that setting. It may be local to my computer?

I did find another site that worked better in that it didn't require me to upload my files but accepted a paste: Gunning Fog Index.

I've had a similar problem with Readability.info. When I try to upload a Word file, it instantly tells me it found no sentences. Put in a URL, however, and equally instantly it provides a number of readability indices. I've written to the owner of the site, and will pass along his response. (Update: He tells me the problem arose after a switch of servers. Look for a fix after Christmas.)

In the meantime, while it's helpful to know the general readability of your website's text, you can do a lot just by following a few simple practices:

1. Keep text columns narrow.
Ideally, the longest line in a column should be 15 words. Ten would be better.

2. Keep words short.
"Magic" is better than "prestidigitation." "Idea" is better than "conceptualization."

3. Keep sentences short.
On some of my blogs, I excerpt articles from print media. Too often, especially in the first paragraph, a sentence goes on for well over 20 words. I don't rewrite such sentences, but I wish I could. Bulleted lists can often replace strings of words and phrases.

4. Keep paragraphs short.
In most fonts used on websites, six or seven lines should be enough for a paragraph. Even if it's a long, complex idea that belongs in a long paragraph, break it up. A long, solid mass of screen text will discourage too many potential readers.

5. Put a little white space between paragraphs.
A short line at the end of a paragraph isn't enough of a break. Just one hit on the Return key can make a world of difference in helping people read your text.

6. Put important words and phrases in "hot spots."
Your sentence's beginning and end are its hot spots. Here readers pay most attention and react most strongly to what they read. Hot spots cool off in sentences buried in mid-paragraph. Then the end of the last sentence becomes hot again.

So a paragraph starting with "There" or "It" has wasted a good hot spot.

7. Use bolded subheads to help navigation.
A subhead every few paragraphs gives readers an overview of the whole document. A numbered list like this one, with bolded and numbered lines, is also easier to understand.

8. Break these rules when you must.
Follow them too closely, and your writing style may start to sound dull and predictable. Too many short sentences (and bulleted lists) will give you too many hot spots. That will make you sound as if you're ranting.

The above text, pasted into the Gunning Fog site, turns out to have a Fog index of 7.396. Out of 517 words, 47 have three or more syllables. I did some revision while writing it, but 7.396 seems like a reasonable level of clarity.

A link to the Gunning Fog Index site is now in the Webwriting Resources list in the left-hand column.

Mediated Cultures
Thanks to the colleague who sent me the link to this very interesting site: mediatedcultures.net @ kansas state university. It's a showcase of the "Digital Ethnography Working Group" at Kansas State University, and it offers some dramatic examples of web communication...especially the "Explorations of Mediated Culture" video. The links on the main page are worth exploring.

Thanks to the colleague who sent me the link to this very interesting site: mediatedcultures.net @ kansas state university.

It's a showcase of the "Digital Ethnography Working Group" at Kansas State University, and it offers some dramatic examples of web communication...especially the "Explorations of Mediated Culture" video. The links on the main page are worth exploring.