Everything you wanted to know about Copyrights Reading speed on computer screens As I'm pulling together materials for the fourth edition of Writing for the Web, I'm finding it hard to update one important issue. For decades, it's been a given that reading text on a computer screen is harder than reading it on paper. The effect is that we read online text 25% more slowly than text on paper. Jakob Nielsen made that critical point back in the 1990s, and said...
As I'm pulling together materials for the fourth edition of Writing for the Web, I'm finding it hard to update one important issue.
For decades, it's been a given that reading text on a computer screen is harder than reading it on paper. The effect is that we read online text 25% more slowly than text on paper.
Jakob Nielsen made that critical point back in the 1990s, and said it was a problem with screen resolution. By 2009, he predicted, resolution would be equivalent to print on paper.
But Nielsen hasn't addressed the issue recently, and when I search for other studies, I find little or nothing published since about 2003. Can anyone point me to recent studies that indicate how quickly people read onscreen, using recent computers, compared to reading text on print?
The Next Big Thing Embedded software, Wireless Net, P2P, Real time movies, and Medicare are some of the often heard phrases used to describe the next big thing on the ..
Copywriting on the web Via AIGA, a very good post by Cathy Curtis: How the Web Made Me a Better Copywriter. She cites my opinions on bulleted lists in the first (1999) edition of Writing for the Web, and disapproves of them, but I hope I've a bit since then.
Via AIGA, a very good post by Cathy Curtis:
How the Web Made Me a Better Copywriter. She cites my opinions on bulleted lists in the first (1999) edition of Writing for the Web, and disapproves of them, but I hope I've a bit since then.
Some search engine ti
Obama: The first hypertext inaugural speech? I'm not a huge fan of Stanley Fish, but today in the New York Times he did the best parsing I've seen of Barack Obama’s Prose Style. Excerpt:... if you look at the text – spread out like a patient etherized on a table – that’s exactly what it’s like. There are few transitions and those there are – “for,” “nor,” “as for,” “so,” “and so” – seem just stuck...
I'm not a huge fan of Stanley Fish, but today in the
New York Times he did the best parsing I've seen of
Barack Obama’s Prose Style. Excerpt:
... if you look at the text – spread out like a patient etherized on a table – that’s exactly what it’s like. There are few transitions and those there are – “for,” “nor,” “as for,” “so,” “and so” – seem just stuck in, providing a pause, not a marker of logical progression.
Obama doesn’t deposit us at a location he has in mind from the beginning; he carries us from meditative bead to meditative bead, and invites us to contemplate.
Of course, as something heard rather than viewed, the speech provides no spaces for contemplation. We have barely taken in a small rhetorical flourish like “All this we can do. All this we will do” before it disappears in the rear-view mirror.
But if we regard the text as an object rather than as a performance in time, it becomes possible (and rewarding) to do what the pundits are doing: linger over each alliteration, parse each emphasis, tease out each implication.
There is a technical term for this kind of writing – parataxis, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as “the placing of propositions or clauses one after the other without indicating . . . the relation of co-ordination or subordination between them.”
The opposite of parataxis is hypotaxis, the marking of relations between propositions and clause by connectives that point backward or forward. One kind of prose is additive – here’s this and now here’s that; the other asks the reader or hearer to hold in suspension the components of an argument that will not fully emerge until the final word.
Parataxis is what hypertext is all about: individual ideas, with no connections between them except those that the reader chooses to make. For much of my forty years as a teacher of writing, I pushed my students to make connections.
Lead your reader from one idea to the next, I told them. That "Next" or "Therefore" or "However" would put your reader into the right frame of mind.
But for close to two decades, we have increasingly read hypertext rather than print text, and made our own connections between chunks. Obama's own prose style is quite at home in print, where he's talking to us one on one. When he's talking to a million people face to face, and a couple of billion around the world, he settles comfortably into parataxis.
No one seems to mind.
Cartooning for the web In his Online Journalism Blog, Paul Bradshaw argues that News websites should make more use of cartoons (and infographics). He describes how a cartoon on OJR got 40,000 hits from around the world. The cartoon was also widely translated. It's a point worth considering, especially for webwriters and bloggers who deal with worldwide audiences.
In his Online Journalism Blog, Paul Bradshaw argues that News websites should make more use of cartoons (and infographics). He describes how a cartoon on OJR got 40,000 hits from around the world. The cartoon was also widely translated.
It's a point worth considering, especially for webwriters and bloggers who deal with worldwide audiences.
Get aboard the Cluetrain again Via Inspecht, an Australian blog: The Cluetrain rides again. Excerpt: Almost 10 years ago Chris Locke, Doc Searls, David Weinberger and Rick Levine published a book that was going to change the way we saw the world, The Cluetrain Manifesto. The basic premise in the book is that markets are conversations. Their members communicate in language that is natural, open, and honest, sometimes even direct. Basically you can’t fake it....
Via Inspecht, an Australian blog: The Cluetrain rides again. Excerpt:
Almost 10 years ago Chris Locke, Doc Searls, David Weinberger and Rick Levine published a book that was going to change the way we saw the world, The Cluetrain Manifesto.
The basic premise in the book is that markets are conversations. Their members communicate in language that is natural, open, and honest, sometimes even direct. Basically you can’t fake it.
Most corporations, on the other hand, only know how to engage in a corporate monotone of mission statements, product strategies and , marketing brochures.
However everything is now changing. People are connecting, and working together. The Internet is enabling these conversations and there is nothing corporations can do to stop it.
The blog post contain a slide show of the Cluetrain Manifesto's key points. Very much worth reviewing (for the old-timers) and discovering (for the newbies).
Thanks to Amy Gahran for the link.
The Layoffs Will Be Blogged Via The New York Times, a article by Claire Cain Miller: The Layoffs Will Be Blogged. Excerpt:Elon Musk, chief executive of the electric-car company Tesla Motors in San Carlos, Calif., said that he had no choice other than to blog about the Oct. 15 layoffs at the closely watched company - even though some employees had not yet been told they were losing their jobs. Valleywag, a Silicon Valley gossip...
Elon Musk, chief executive of the electric-car company Tesla Motors in San Carlos, Calif., said that he had no choice other than to blog about the Oct. 15 layoffs at the closely watched company - even though some employees had not yet been told they were losing their jobs.
Valleywag, a Silicon Valley gossip blog owned by Gawker Media, had already published the news, and it was being picked up by traditional media reporters, Mr. Musk said.
“We had to say something to prevent articles being written that were not accurate.”
Blogging about staff cuts is particularly prevalent in Silicon Valley, where tech gossip sites pounce on every rumor and Web-savvy employees broadcast their every thought on personal blogs and Twitter feeds.
Start-up companies in particular seem to the feel pressure to break bad news on their own blogs so that they can better control the message.
Unlike more traditional firms, many of today’s Web companies were built on the mission of creating transparency for users. Executives have lived that mission, blogging about company successes. Now that bad times are coming, some of them feel the need to make that public, too. A blog post also comes across as more heartfelt than a press release with canned quotations.
How to write an effective copy Finding just the right words to describe your product or service isn\'t as easy as it looks, says Puneet Mehrotra. Published on 12th October ..
Content is King on a Website Content can make or break a website. The power of the written word has been witnessed many a time. Products have become success stories, resumes trans ..
Jakob Nielsen reviews the Kindle 2 For a quarter of a century, almost, Jakob Nielsen has lamented the low resolution of text on the computer screen, and he's been right. Webwriters have created a whole new style of writing to deal with that problem. Now he's written a Kindle 2 Usability Review (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox). The summary: Amazon's new e-book reader offers print-level readability and shines for reading fiction, but it has awkward interaction design and...
For a quarter of a century, almost, Jakob Nielsen has lamented the low resolution of text on the computer screen, and he's been right. Webwriters have created a whole new style of writing to deal with that problem.
Amazon's new e-book reader offers print-level readability and shines for reading fiction, but it has awkward interaction design and poor support for non-linear content.
Quite apart from the excitement of a new toy, the reported sharpness of Kindle 2 text has a portent for webwriters: What happens when the same sharpness is available for ordinary computer monitors and even mobile phones?
For other reasons,
Amy Gahran sees great promise in the Kindle 2 for journalists. In
another post, she links to a story arguing that the
New York Times should give every subscriber a free Kindle, and to a review of the Sony PRS-700—a competitor of the Kindle.
Everyone seems to be linking to Clay Shirky's long, thought-provoking post Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable ... so I might as well too. An excerpt:The newspaper people often note that newspapers benefit society as a whole. This is true, but irrelevant to the problem at hand; “You’re gonna miss us when we’re gone!” has never been much of a business model. So who covers all that news if some significant...
The newspaper people often note that newspapers benefit society as a whole. This is true, but irrelevant to the problem at hand; “You’re gonna miss us when we’re gone!” has never been much of a business model.
So who covers all that news if some significant fraction of the currently employed newspaper people lose their jobs?
I don’t know. Nobody knows. We’re collectively living through 1500, when it’s easier to see what’s broken than what will replace it.
The internet turns 40 this fall. Access by the general public is less than half that age. Web use, as a normal part of life for a majority of the developed world, is less than half that age.
We just got here. Even the revolutionaries can’t predict what will happen.
Welcome to the White House—and the 21st Century (updated) Back in 2002, giving a workshop in Sao Paulo, I showed my students the current White House website. It was pretty dull, but it did offer a page in Spanish. Politically smart, I guess, except that the links on the Spanish page were still in English. Politics on the web was still pretty primitive. Last year I wrote an article about the gorgeous Barack Obama campaign website. Clearly, the upstart...
Back in 2002, giving a workshop in Sao Paulo, I showed my students the current White House website. It was pretty dull, but it did offer a page in Spanish. Politically smart, I guess, except that the links on the Spanish page were still in English. Politics on the web was still pretty primitive.
Last year I wrote an article about the gorgeous
Barack Obama campaign website. Clearly, the upstart understood the web far better than any other politician on the planet.
Webwriters, take notes. Barack Obama has raised the standard.
I've discussed the site in more detail on
The Hook, the politics blog of
The Tyee.
Update: Jimmy Orr at the
Christian Science Monitor has a good article on the site, written from his perspective as W's original website guy.
Personalize Your Blog with .ME Domain Name As of today, .ME domains are open for public registrations. .ME has been the talk of the town because of its potential for internet users. .ME domains are just perfect for blogs. Just think about it, with a .ME domain you can register YOURNAME.ME. .ME domains are not just limited to personal websites. It can be used as a catchy [...]
As of today, .ME domains are open for public registrations. .ME has been the talk of the town because of its potential for internet users. .ME domains are just perfect for blogs. Just think about it, with a .ME domain you can register YOURNAME.ME.
.ME domains are not just limited to personal websites. It can be used as a catchy marketing tool. For example, verb-oriented domain names such as Contact.me, Drive.me, Date.me, Help.me, Love.me make perfect sense to visitors.
Well, you can purchase those premium domains only through the auction that’s coming up, but you can still get good .ME domain names if you hurry up.
It is little bit expensive and requires 2 years of contract, but it will be well worth your investment. I was going to register “Prayfor.me” but as I thought.. it’s gone. But I’ve found a couple of really nice domain names already. So register a .ME domain name now!
Register a .ME Domain Here
A must-read for all webwriters Via the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism: The State of the News Media 2009. It makes grim reading for journalists in all media (and not just Americans), but those of us who specialize in writing for websites really need to understand what's happening. An excerpt from the introduction:Perhaps least noticed yet most important, the audience migration to the Internet is now accelerating. The number of Americans who regularly go...
Via the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism:
The State of the News Media 2009. It makes grim reading for journalists in all media (and not just Americans), but those of us who specialize in writing for websites really need to understand what's happening. An excerpt from the introduction:
Perhaps least noticed yet most important, the audience migration to the Internet is now accelerating.
The number of Americans who regularly go online for news, by one survey, jumped 19% in the last two years; in 2008 alone traffic to the top 50 news sites rose 27%.
Yet it is now all but settled that advertising revenue—the model that financed journalism for the last century—will be inadequate to do so in this one.
Growing by a third annually just two years ago, online ad revenue to news websites now appears to be flattening; in newspapers it is declining.
Blogging the Internet Marketing Conference This morning I took part in a panel on webwriting, part of the Internet Marketing Conference. It was a lot of fun, and I learned a lot. One thing I learned: Miss 604, also known as Rebecca Bollwitt, is a very speedy blogger. She summed up my presentation (on concise text) with admirable concision and accuracy.
This morning I took part in a panel on webwriting, part of the Internet Marketing Conference. It was a lot of fun, and I learned a lot. One thing I learned: Miss 604, also known as Rebecca Bollwitt, is a very speedy blogger. She summed up my presentation (on concise text) with admirable concision and accuracy.
When Choosing a Niche for Your BANS Site… A number of Build a Niche Store forum members suggest that one should target niches that can’t be found anywhere but at auction. But I disagree with this. The majority of my BANS (Build a Niche Store) sites sell things that can be purchased in any retail stores, but I also have vintage auctions that sell only [...]
A number of Build a Niche Store forum members suggest that one should target niches that can’t be found anywhere but at auction.
But I disagree with this.
The majority of my BANS (Build a Niche Store) sites sell things that can be purchased in any retail stores, but I also have vintage auctions that sell only the things that can be bought through auctions.
What I learned from my EPN transaction stats is that people who buy stuff from auction sites already are likely to have an eBay account already. I have more ACRUs generated from a kitchenware BANS site than anything else. That kitchenware I’m talking about averages $20 and it can be purchased at any local stores like Walmart and Target.
The advice given by the BANS members is good, but ignoring the other half of the market isn’t a good idea. I suggest that you build BANS sites for both, because both work well.
Just a quick thought.
Tips for a New Website It\'s not easy not easy to promote your website or get sales initially. Following the tips given in this column can at least give your Web site ..
Writing the Web’s Future in Many Languages Via the December 30 New York Times: Writing the Web’s Future in Many Languages. Excerpt:The next chapter of the World Wide Web will not be written in English alone. Asia already has twice as many Internet users as North America, and by 2012 it will have three times as many. Already, more than half of the search queries on Google come from outside the United States.The globalization of the Web...
The next chapter of the World Wide Web will not be written in English alone. Asia already has twice as many Internet users as North America, and by 2012 it will have three times as many.
Already, more than half of the search queries on Google come from outside the United States.
The globalization of the Web has inspired entrepreneurs like Ram Prakash Hanumanthappa, an engineer from outside Bangalore, India. Mr. Ram Prakash learned English as a teenager, but he still prefers to express himself to friends and family members in his native Kannada. But using Kannada on the Web involves computer keyboard maps that even Mr. Ram Prakash finds challenging to learn.
So in 2006 he developed Quillpad, an online service for typing in 10 South Asian languages. Users spell out words of local languages phonetically in Roman letters, and Quillpad’s predictive engine converts them into local-language script. Bloggers and authors rave about the service, which has attracted interest from the cellphone maker Nokia and the attention of Google Inc., which has since introduced its own transliteration tool.
Mr. Ram Prakash said Western technology companies have misunderstood the linguistic landscape of India, where English is spoken proficiently by only about a tenth of the population and even many college-educated Indians prefer the contours of their native tongues for everyday speech.
“You’ve got to give them an opportunity to express themselves correctly, rather than make a fool out of themselves and forcing them to use English,” he said.
It's a fascinating article about an important development. I've added a link to Quillpad in the Webwriting Resources list.
People Are Getting Banned from EPN, but Why? EPN (eBay Partner Network) has been actively sending out account termination letters to the publishers. The termination looks something like this… “After reviewing your account transactions, we determined that your account has been generating non-bona fide transactions related to new registered users. This violates our Code of Conduct and breaches the agreement between us. Your [...]
EPN (eBay Partner Network) has been actively sending out account termination letters to the publishers. The termination looks something like this…
“After reviewing your account transactions, we determined that your account has been generating non-bona fide transactions related to new registered users. This violates our Code of Conduct and breaches the agreement between us. Your account will be terminated immediately and no pending commissions will be paid to you. You are not permitted to rejoin the eBay Partner Network.
Almost all of the publishers who was banned claim that they’ve done nothing wrong, but I found a pattern from their explanation. People who got banned from EPN usually purchased traffic from unknown sources. I don’t know if this triggered a flag, but I think this is why their account was banned; Not from purchasing the traffic, but from the quality of traffic generate from these traffic brokers.
Like I said, I don’t know the definite answer, but it seems like purchasing traffic to your EPN affiliate website is a big risk. Don’t do it. If you really want to do it, you should filter purchased traffic with a landing page. I think that should be safe.
Please share your thoughts. Why these people are getting banned from EPN without an apparent reason? I hope EPN gives out a warning first before closing an account.
