Jakob Nielsen's advice


	Jakob Nielsen's advice

Jaycer17

9-18-2007 9:23 AM

288 views

tags:

writing, web, study, studies

Jaycer17 says:

Let this be taken into account by all bloggers and such.

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<div style="margin: 12px 0px; font-family: arial; color: #333333; background: #ffffff; border: solid 4px #e5e5e5; width: 100%; clear: left;"><div class="CM_CTB_Content_Wrap" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;background-color: #ffffff;"><div style="border-bottom: solid 1px #dcdcdc; white-space: nowrap; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: #eeeeee ;background-image: url(http://clipmarks.com/images/source-bg.gif); background-repeat: repeat-x; height: 24px; line-height: 24px; vertical-align: middle; padding-bottom: 4px; color: #666666; font-size: 10px;" ><a href="http://clipmarks.com/clip-to-blog/" title="see clips that are hot right now"><img src="http://content.clipmarks.com/blog_embed/d03da733-bce8-4c61-aac3-70f907377e60/B60071AA-B683-4B23-9EF2-B0DEB883D23A/" alt="" width="19" height="19" border="0" style="vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px 4px; display: inline; border: none; float:none;" /></a>clipped from <a title="http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9710a.html" href="http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9710a.html" style="font-size: 11px;">www.useit.com</a></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9710a.html"><H1>How Users Read on the Web</H1>
They <STRONG>don't</STRONG>.
<P>
People rarely read Web pages word by word; instead, <STRONG>they <A href="http://www.useit.com/alertbox/whyscanning.html">scan</A> the page</STRONG>, picking out individual words and sentences. In <A href="http://www.useit.com/papers/webwriting/">research on how people read websites</A> we found that 79 percent of our test users always scanned any new page they came across; only 16 percent read word-by-word. (Update: a newer study found that <A href="http://www.useit.com/alertbox/newsletters.html">users read email newsletters</A> even more abruptly than they read websites.)
</P><P>
As a result, Web pages have to employ <STRONG>scannable text</STRONG>, using
</P><UL>
<li style="margin-left:16px;padding-left: 0px;">highlighted <STRONG>keywords</STRONG> (hypertext links serve as one form of highlighting; typeface variations and color are others)
</LI><li style="margin-left:16px;padding-left: 0px;">meaningful <STRONG>sub-headings</STRONG> (not "clever" ones)
</LI><li style="margin-left:16px;padding-left: 0px;">bulleted <STRONG>lists</STRONG>
</LI><li style="margin-left:16px;padding-left: 0px;"><STRONG>one idea</STRONG> per paragraph (users will skip over any additional ideas if they are not caught by the first few words in the paragraph)
</LI><li style="margin-left:16px;padding-left: 0px;">the <A href="http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9606.html">inverted pyramid</A> style, starting with the conclusion
</LI><li style="margin-left:16px;padding-left: 0px;"><STRONG>half the word count</STRONG> (or less) than conventional writing</LI></UL></blockquote></div><div style="margin: 0px 6px 6px 4px;"><table style="font-size: 11px;border-spacing: 0px;padding: 0px;" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tr><td style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;">&nbsp;</td><td align="right" style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;width:107px" width="107"><a href="http://clipmarks.com/share/B60071AA-B683-4B23-9EF2-B0DEB883D23A/blog/" title="blog or email this clip"><img src="http://content7.clipmarks.com/images/c2b-foot.png" border="0" alt="blog it" width="107" height="17" style="border-width:0px;padding:0px;margin:0px;" /></a></td></tr></table></div></div>

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