Is the Web Dumbing Us All Down?
The latest design writing piece in the magazine Design Week, Screen literate (29 July 2010), examines the power of the written word online. It was triggered by the launch of Yahoo’s first editorial style guide, which the internet services provider describes as “the ultimate sourcebook for writing, editing and creating content for the digital world.” Along with the good sense, there’s an assertion from Anna Richardson, the journalist, that I’d like to challenge. “Attention spans are much shorter” amongst “online audiences,” she says. This is a common belief, but I take a different view. The excellent Poynter EyeTrack studies, which looked at how people read print and digital newspapers, suggest that while online readers may navigate quickly to the content that interests them, they often read for longer than offline readers when they’ve found what they’re looking for. It’s a myth that we have all become Twitter-brained visual grazers with no appetite for prose. I’m with comedian Jerry Se
