Bob La Quey wrote: > On 7/10/07, James G. Sack (jim) <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> There was a /. posting to a Jakob Nielsen article >> Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, July 9, 2007: >> Write Articles, Not Blog Postings >> http://www.useit.com/alertbox/articles-not-blogs.html >> >> which was interesting, but.. >> >> .. I wanted to point out a link from there to >> Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, April 17, 2006: >> F-Shaped Pattern For Reading Web Content >> http://www.useit.com/alertbox/reading_pattern.html >> >> for the neat eyetracking measurement results he shows. >> >> Regards, >> ..jim > Those F patterns are very interesting. I do believe > > * Users won't read your text thoroughly in a word-by-word manner. > Exhaustive reading is rare, especially when prospective customers are > conducting their initial research to compile a shortlist of vendors. > Yes, some people will read more, but most won't. > > * The first two paragraphs must state the most important > information. There's some hope that users will actually read this > material, though they'll probably read more of the first paragraph > than the second. > > * Start subheads, paragraphs, and bullet points with > information-carrying words that users will notice when scanning down > the left side of your content in the final stem of their F-behavior. > They'll read the third word on a line much less often than the first > two words. > > BobLQ "Writing a lot of essays for my business efforts these day"
Although the measurements relate to readers of web content, I'm sure there's a fair amount of commonality with business correspondence and newspaper/magazine articles. Some might say the lessons are old hat to newspaper copyeditors. Surely there are additional considerations for titles, icons & embedded images, and things like pull-quotes. Regards, ..jim -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
