Christine Cawthorne's Geekeasy talk: How you read on the web (and why you should care)
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Christine Cawthorne, web copywriter,
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Christine Cawthorne's Geekeasy talk: How you read on the web (and why you should care)
- 1. How you read on the web ...and why you should care
- 2. Christine Cawthorne • Web copywriter
- 3. Eye up mate
- 4. eye eye cap’n What do your eyes do when you read?
- 5. smooth operator You don’t read as smoothly as you think you do
- 6. space hopper Your eyes bounce around the text
- 8. oops, forgetful You can drop 30% of the words when reading!
- 9. Bouma baby The shape of the word is called ‘bouma’
- 10. THIS IS HARD TO READ The theory of parallel letterwise recognition
- 11. Bam! We recognise the shapes of the first 10,000 words we ever learned
- 12. brainpower Using these words on websites helps ‘reduce the cognitive load’
- 13. The f word We read in an F shape
- 16. Write better Condense your ideas
- 17. Write betterer Explain things quickly
- 18. Users only read 20% http://www.nngroup.com/articles/how-little-do-users-read/
- 19. Write well good Explain things simply
- 20. Write like a pro Tell the user what they want to know
- 21. Write like you’re right Not what you want to say (zzz)
- 22. Paragraphs are friends White space around words helps you understand what’s written
- 24. Ta da, done! Help the user complete their task
Editor's Notes
- {"5":"French ophthalmologist Louis Émile Javal in the late 19th century described how do not move continuously along a line of text, but make short rapid movements (saccades) intermingled with short stops (fixations).\n","22":"Don’t have huge slabs of text, it’s offputting. Also: edit, edit, edit. Take away half of what you’ve said. \nStephen King – to write is human, to edit is divine\n","11":"These are the words you use every day. Short words, connecting words, very simple words\n","12":"This means it takes less brainpower to read and understand these words. This is really important online when you’re competing against flashy adverts, other stuff on the page, the back button, the screen glare and flicker … and probably the lure of Facebook\nIt also helps those with reading difficulty or a ‘lower literacy rate’ – get through the text more quickly\n","18":"On an average visit, users read half the information on pages with 111 words or less.\nNielson Norman\n","7":"Your eye does this in a rhythm because you can probably take in three words at a time \nBUT\nthe eye tires if the line requires more than 3 or 4 of these saccadic jumps. More than this is found to introduce strain and errors in reading (e.g. Doubling).\n","24":"Use common words, frontload and keep the text to a minimum\nAlso helps with SEO\n","2":"Homepage editor AOL and BT, trainer in writing for the web, online journalism teacher at 2 universities, social media manager… used to be a BBC journalist.\n","8":"and the text can still make sense because of the context. Your brain is able to do this from around age 9, so our reading age is usually 9-12.\nI’ll explain more how we can do this\n","14":"It takes fewer muscles to move your eye down that across so you should FRONTLOAD – put your keywords at the front of sentences, titles etc\n","3":"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6DRl6tTjCU&feature=related\n","9":"Couple of theories. One is that we can recognise the overall shape of the word\n","15":"Users are task-orientated on the web, they’re busy. They don’t want to read, it hurts their brain. You should help them.\n","10":"Brain recognises the individual letters making up a word\nLower case is easier to read because the shapes are more distinctive\nReaders recognize the upper portions of letters more than the lower portions\n"}