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thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
I've had a sneaking suspicion for quite some time now, that entertaining or engaging writing is more tantamount, more paramount, than informative or perhaps even meaningful writing, when words are placed online. While there is some statistical evidence out there regarding how the length of articles, length of paragraphs, structure of the prose, style of writing, and other factors correlate to popularity of articles online, I'd like to refrain from referring to such data today [1]. Instead, allow me to engage you in a thought experiement; allow me to help you look back at your past experiences reading online, and help you consider what acts as the invisible hand in making you read. The accepted dogma is that when browsing the internet, our already short attention spans are cut even shorter. Even without presenting you with the hard numbers, you'd surely concur to at least some degree. I distinctly recall telling a friend of mine, an avid reader of the New Yorker who had linked me to an outrageously long article on NewYorker.com, "This article is so long!" Length was clearly a deterrent which prevented me from reading certain articles online. Interestingly enough, when presented similar extensive articles in the flesh (said friend is a subscriber to the physical editions of the publication, not least because the online versions of the New Yorker are reported to be rather shoddy in presentation), I was much more receptive to reading such a longwinded article in full. Perhaps it is a certain mindset that we adopt when we are online that conforms many of us to think kind of behavior. Perhaps we prime ourselves, putting ourselves in entertainment seeking mode, shutting down internal processes that allow us to tolerate walls of text that we willingly tackle when in "book reading mode". Let's suppose that one goal of mankind is to motivate the citizens of the internet to read more artciles online. What strategies could we take? Two strategies are readily apparent:
- Motivate society to have longer attention spans online, and to see the use of the internet more along the lines of research or learning, rather that entertainment
- Mold the article to fit the needs and desires of the online reader
Whether it be the right way or not, the professional writers of the online craft now seem resigned to #2 above [2]. While it may be arguable that engaging courageously in #1 would be more noble, the (perhaps unfortunate) reality is that for both the professional writer who has to make a living and the amateur blogger who wants to get a few more people to read his blog, catering to the customer is the rational path [3]. But as writers (if you're reading this, it means you're a writer to some degree, whether you realize or not), must we to succumb completely to the desires of the online man? Or is there a compropise -- to bow to the consumer in terms of style, but to be unwielding in content and message? Or phrased declaratively:
The writer must first and foremost formulate his prose in a manner suitable to the online reader's taste. Only then can a writer hope to communicate the larger message to the reader.
Most of us have a purpose in our writing. Whether it be as grandiose as motivating social change, or as humble as making us laugh, there is an end which motivates us to take to our digital pens. But to be successful in this regard mandates that we first take to the online reader's needs, only after which we can satisfy our own agenda. Malcolm Gladwell's writing is often excruciatingly long when placed online. But be it digital or physical, he seems to know instinctively what it takes to talk to the reader:
Good writing does not succeed or fail on the strength of its ability to persuade. [sic] It succeeds or fails on the strength of its ability to engage you, to make you think, to give you a glimpse into someone else's head -- even if in the end you conclude that someone else's head is not a place you'd really like to be. Malcolm Gladwell in "What the Dog Saw and Other Adventures"
[1] Partly because I don't think the current dataset available tells us the whole story, and partly because I don't want to do the due diligence that this would require! [2] I distinctly recall and oldschool writer (perhaps on Bloomberg News or The Atlantic) lamenting this fact, lambasting the fact that shitty writing gets rewarded online. [3] This often means less reporting and more sensationalism. Reference: How Forbes Stole a NYT Article and Got All the Credit
Crossposted from my main blog
  
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Just kidding. I agree. It's interesting. I think it's similar to TV dinners. You get them quickly, you eat them quickly. Most people don't get them to sit and savor. I think a lot of people have a correlation in their minds between accessibility and expected duration.
Of course, formatting will frequently have a lot to do with it. If I take one piece, and publish it twice, once in wall of text format, and once with good layout, we know which one will be read better.
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For me, reading long articles is only a problem on the internet because the quality tends to be so low.
If I see a long article in the economist, I know it is probably worth my time. If someone posts a long OP in general? Not so much.
Why invest my time into reading something of which the quality is dubious at best?
Other than that, reading on a computer just isn't comfortable to the eyes. Short pieces can work, but book sized articles? No thank you.
As such, writing for the internet requires a unique style, just like any different media requires a unique style. You need to relay the same info in less time, and ideally, display your knowledge on a topic very early on, so we know you are reliable and worth the time.
Is it better or worse? It is different.
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If you pre-judge it as not being worth your time, you'll never appreciate the content.
I have low expectations but high hopes, and try to get through reading things I start. I may occasionally just take impressions, but overall, I prefer to read whole things.
Comfort, of course, is subjective. I'm fine reading insane amounts on my computer. Whole books, no trouble. A lot of that is going to be in having appropriate font sizes and resolutions.
Yes, a lot of online content IS sub-par, but so is a lot of offline content. That's just personal taste, of course, but still. I think the majority is that we're simply socially engineered to treat the inherent value of something as directly proportional to how much effort we put into getting it.
Fast food? Meh. Text messages? Not much of meaningful conversation. You still see a lot of big announcements and invitations in the mail rather than digital, the perception of worth is higher for some bizarre reason.
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Can you say "more tantamount"? It didn't ring true when i read it to myself, and having googled the meaning it seems to imply "being equal to".
Anyway, as I was reading your blog I was thinking "this guy has a very wordy way of expressing himself". Then I read the bolded part and I thought, "well maybe this is a kind of a joke because it is what he is describing". After that I read it again and looked at your previous few blog entries, and now I'm not sure whether you wrote it in that way on purpose or not.
I think it's true that most people are just looking for the "LOLs" when they read blogs online. I know this enough from the times I have written a blog on TL, but I don't think it really should affect what you choose to write about or how you write. If you want to appeal to the most people and you are prepared to do anything to that end then obviously that is going to send you down a path in which you'll probably lose your own voice and write things that are generic and base. You know, like just tanking your MMR down to bottom level bronze, and then making fun of them because they don't know how to play Starcraft.
When I write blogs I just do it for myself, so I don't try to appeal to readers too much. I imagine that 95% of people won't be interested and will just skim it and leave, but anybody who is interested and has something to say will leave a comment. They are mostly the people I want to hear from anyway so this is all good.
In the end I suppose it depends what you want to achieve from writing your blog. Is it practice for becoming a writer for print media? That's what it sounds like.
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For me, concise writing holds my interest. The length of an article isn't always correlated to how much content can be found within it. William Strunk and E.B. White are the paragons of all forms of writing. If there's a word that adds nothing, remove it.
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On April 18 2012 02:13 Zorkmid wrote:
For me, concise writing holds my interest. The length of an article isn't always correlated to how much content can be found within it. William Strunk and E.B. White are the paragons of all forms of writing. If there's a word that adds nothing, remove it.
Concise writing holds my interest. Length and quality aren't always directly proportional. William Strunk and E.B. White are, for me, the paragons of all forms of writing. If a word adds nothing, remove it.
Is Doctor Seuss your favorite author of all time?
Sorry, couldn't help myself. Your post just made me giggle at the irony when it could be tightened up so much and not lose the meaning.
I only agree to a point, by the way. While it's entirely possible to be overly verbose, sometimes a little flavor that wasn't really vital can add to the effect.
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On April 18 2012 02:20 JingleHell wrote:Show nested quote +On April 18 2012 02:13 Zorkmid wrote:
For me, concise writing holds my interest. The length of an article isn't always correlated to how much content can be found within it. William Strunk and E.B. White are the paragons of all forms of writing. If there's a word that adds nothing, remove it. Concise writing holds my interest. Length and quality aren't always directly proportional. William Strunk and E.B. White are, for me, the paragons of all forms of writing. If a word adds nothing, remove it. Is Doctor Seuss your favorite author of all time? Sorry, couldn't help myself. Your post just made me giggle at the irony when it could be tightened up so much and not lose the meaning. I only agree to a point, by the way. While it's entirely possible to be overly verbose, sometimes a little flavor that wasn't really vital can add to the effect.
Ha! Good job. My academic career involved a lot of scientific writing, and my colleagues would constantly be flaying everything I submitted, just like you did.
I thought I was concise, but as JingleHell shows, you can always trim away the fat!
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This sounds like a topic similar to "the medium is the message". TV shows that are presented as "educational" like Sesame Street are entertaining and inherently passive. This has caused children to expect all learning to be this way. If it's not entertaining it's not worth my attention. There's a lot more to it but my friend wrote a paper on it for his masters and was just talking about this weekend and this reminded me of it.
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I think the big puzzle piece that is missing from your argument is that it all depends on who you're writing for. If your target audience is a bunch of uneducated idiots then yeah, maybe be a little bit more concise and use simple syntax. You wanna appeal to the intellectuals? Good prose might work wonders then. There is no such thing as the online reader. There's only people, and they all belong to some part of society and act in a certain way. (I think it's probably true though, that the attention span of people is on average lower online.)
Also, these two ring very true, at least for me.
On April 18 2012 01:56 zalz wrote:
Other than that, reading on a computer just isn't comfortable to the eyes. Short pieces can work, but book sized articles? No thank you.
Reading on a screeen feels unnatural to me and after a couple of pages I usually have to take a break.
On April 18 2012 02:13 Zorkmid wrote:
For me, concise writing holds my interest. The length of an article isn't always correlated to how much content can be found within it.
I often wish that people would strip their articles down to the bare minimum of information. I recently had to read a couple of books on paedagogy and it was a nightmare. So long winded...
Edit: Also, how would you "Motivate society to have longer attention spans online, and to see the use of the internet more along the lines of research or learning, rather that entertainment"? I don't even know how one would go about doing this. Of course it would be great if everyone tried to educate themselves rather than entertain themselves. But this behaviour seems kinda deeply rooted in us all (in general at least), whatever the reason might be (lazyness, gratification, etc). Changing something like that could turn out to be quite difficult, if not impossible.
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why is the text slightly blue? or are my eyes going?
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I think brevity in writing online is much more important than on paper when trying to get attention. I'm reading The Elements of Style at the moment, although it doesn't talk about writing online, but it talks of brevity.
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On April 18 2012 07:12 snively wrote:
why is the text slightly blue? or are my eyes going?
The eyes.
Nah, I think he has extra formatting options available that the average poster doesn't.
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I write extremely long, pedantic, pointless and often poorly-constructed sentences and nobody seems to mind. Maybe it's the pictures I include to break up the text?
Not that I would consider myself a blogger so much as I would some prick who posts stuff on TL.
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It's simple. Hook them, reel them in, then torture them however you'd like. You can get away with murder if you set the hook right. You don't have to totally mold your writing to what they want. Just make the beginning good enough to make them think you're about to give them what they want.
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I'm not much of a literature guy, but when I do venture into it, I'm always held by those that provide a bit of intrigue in the otherwise plain prose. Like Maupassant or Kafka.
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Isn't this an issue of the nature of electronic journalism rather than with the ability to digest literature?
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It's hard to read long passages on digital screens. It strains the eyes and simply isn't as visually pleasing. This is why the Kindle sees success: it allows the best of both worlds with unstraining screens while also displaying information which is, after all, digital.
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thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
On April 18 2012 02:07 deathly rat wrote:
Can you say "more tantamount"? It didn't ring true when i read it to myself, and having googled the meaning it seems to imply "being equal to".
>_<
(looks like I messed up!)
Anyway, as I was reading your blog I was thinking "this guy has a very wordy way of expressing himself". Then I read the bolded part and I thought, "well maybe this is a kind of a joke because it is what he is describing". After that I read it again and looked at your previous few blog entries, and now I'm not sure whether you wrote it in that way on purpose or not.
I'm just experimenting and freewheeling with my writing these days, so you'll find a pretty wide range of styles from me 
I think it's true that most people are just looking for the "LOLs" when they read blogs online. I know this enough from the times I have written a blog on TL, but I don't think it really should affect what you choose to write about or how you write. If you want to appeal to the most people and you are prepared to do anything to that end then obviously that is going to send you down a path in which you'll probably lose your own voice and write things that are generic and base. You know, like just tanking your MMR down to bottom level bronze, and then making fun of them because they don't know how to play Starcraft.
Hmm true.
When I write blogs I just do it for myself, so I don't try to appeal to readers too much. I imagine that 95% of people won't be interested and will just skim it and leave, but anybody who is interested and has something to say will leave a comment. They are mostly the people I want to hear from anyway so this is all good.
In the end I suppose it depends what you want to achieve from writing your blog.
Yup~ it's all relative 
Is it practice for becoming a writer for print media? That's what it sounds like.
Nope it's mainly just philosophizing about stuff.
Welcome to the brain dump
On April 18 2012 02:30 Zorkmid wrote:Show nested quote +On April 18 2012 02:20 JingleHell wrote:On April 18 2012 02:13 Zorkmid wrote:
For me, concise writing holds my interest. The length of an article isn't always correlated to how much content can be found within it. William Strunk and E.B. White are the paragons of all forms of writing. If there's a word that adds nothing, remove it. Concise writing holds my interest. Length and quality aren't always directly proportional. William Strunk and E.B. White are, for me, the paragons of all forms of writing. If a word adds nothing, remove it. Is Doctor Seuss your favorite author of all time? Sorry, couldn't help myself. Your post just made me giggle at the irony when it could be tightened up so much and not lose the meaning. I only agree to a point, by the way. While it's entirely possible to be overly verbose, sometimes a little flavor that wasn't really vital can add to the effect. Ha! Good job. My academic career involved a lot of scientific writing, and my colleagues would constantly be flaying everything I submitted, just like you did. I thought I was concise, but as JingleHell shows, you can always trim away the fat!
Haha I remember being chastised for using flowery language in an engineering thesis once
On April 18 2012 05:46 surfinbird1 wrote:
Edit: Also, how would you "Motivate society to have longer attention spans online, and to see the use of the internet more along the lines of research or learning, rather that entertainment"? I don't even know how one would go about doing this. Of course it would be great if everyone tried to educate themselves rather than entertain themselves. But this behaviour seems kinda deeply rooted in us all (in general at least), whatever the reason might be (lazyness, gratification, etc). Changing something like that could turn out to be quite difficult, if not impossible.
If we're raised differently and are surrounded by a different societal standard... then perhaps...
On April 18 2012 07:12 snively wrote:
why is the text slightly blue? or are my eyes going?
Hmm I didn't do anything special, so I "think" it's just an illusion of contrast and spacing??
On April 18 2012 09:24 StorkHwaiting wrote:
It's simple. Hook them, reel them in, then torture them however you'd like. You can get away with murder if you set the hook right. You don't have to totally mold your writing to what they want. Just make the beginning good enough to make them think you're about to give them what they want.
On April 18 2012 11:21 kefkalives wrote:
Isn't this an issue of the nature of electronic journalism rather than with the ability to digest literature?
That's my thought on the matter at least.
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