People Don’t Read Online—They Scan. This Is How to Write for Them Scanning is searching. Reader’s behavior when scanning may seem pure laziness, but it’s not. It’s an efficient strategy to seek out and filter information. Scanning also allows readers to avoid informational overload.
How writing reframes our knowledge and drives our decisions. Our message is effectively drowning in a sea of organizational and semantic noise that is part and parcel of the product itself. how do we make this easier on the user? Nope… not empathy. Writing. Writing about anything presupposes some degree of understanding of the context.
Financial writing is full of jargon and complexity. But a series of research suggests that investors are drawn to simple, clear writing with short sentences. The simple reason is that complex writing is off-putting — people tune out and find it dull, a fact confirmed by neuroscience research.
Clarity, not creativity, is the backbone of good UX writing. Choose simple words and craft shorter sentences. Explain acronyms users might not know. Use proper punctuation. Be extra careful about things like cleverness, wordplay, and idioms that might affect usability. Above all, write to be understood.
"understand the digital reader’s brain, and to get a couple of concrete writing tips for your next digital text." "Nothing can surpass a text when it comes to transforming abstract thoughts into concrete expression."
The “known-new contract” is a linguistic concept used to describe how writers achieve cohesion between sentences by first presenting what readers already know (information previously presented) before introducing new information.
Writing tips from "Writing for the European Commission web presence"
From now, house style guide recommends terms such as ‘climate crisis’ and ‘global heating’
People do not read online: "fundamental scanning behaviors remain constant, even as designs change."
"The Huffington Post is the third most popular online news site, after only Yahoo! News and Google News. They must be doing something right!"
"Plain Language For Everyone, Even Experts" (video)
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