Usability Views Article Details  home | timeline | recent | popular | e-reports | userati | books | about  More Alike Than We Think (20 Mar 2006) Impatient readers are likely to skip any “walls of words” as too much work. This is not to say that they never read anything in detail, but without cues to the value of such long paragraphs, they have no reason to invest the time and effort it would take to read them. Lower-literacy readers will often just give up, skipping over text they find too hard—or too daunting. Long paragraphs often mean complex sentences—just the kind of writing that is hardest to read for someone without good reading skills or a deep familiarity with English. Older adults are penalized by long blocks of text, precisely because they are likely to read everything. This slows them down, so reading each page takes longer, and can take them off track if the information is not completely relevant. Add this article to Del.icio.us Article URL: http://uxmatters.com/MT/archives/000080.php Read 25 more articles from User Experience Matters sorted by date, popularity, or title. Next Article: Open Sesame! Selling UX Services          Books about Usability | Information Architecture | Information Visualisation | Technology History This site is a labour of love built by Chris McEvoy

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