Typography and the Internet
Thursday, December 18th, 2008Punctuation aside for a moment, a critical distinction between writing for the web and on the printed page is understanding the difference in reading styles between web surfers and magazine readers. It takes a new style of writing to keep readers attention while pouring through line after line of unbroken sentences whilst scrolling down a monitor.
Web readers tend to scan for highlights or relevant topics denoted by several methods:
- Headings and/or Subheadings to provide breaks or shifts in topic;
- Formatting discussion points in ordered and/or unordered lists;
- Placing tags of emphasis or weight on key topics;
- Denoting relevant topics—punctuation marks—with mdashs or other separating marks.
I consider myself a typophile and was rather interested in the topic of disappearing glyphs and other punctuation characters during the transition from traditional print media to the web and social networking. However, I found it quite a struggle reading through line after line of continuous narrative with no line breaks or what I might call scannable text, in addition to following even half of the relevant hyperlinks.
Considering the topic, Typography and the Internet, I would expect the writing style to be more appropriate to the medium. Wrestling with this very issue on my own weblog, in addition to accessing the Wordpress support forums to learn the formatting shortcuts, my primary source of reference for Web Accessibility and Usability is the Nielsen Norman Group.
I attended their international conference, Usability Week 2008, earlier this year and it was one of the educational highlights of my career. I recommend their biweekly Alertbox, which is a complimentary newsletter covering all areas of web usability, accessibility, page authoring and other topics to improve the online customer experience.