Why People Don't Read:

People don't read on the internet.

How silly. People do read on the internet. People read all the time! You're reading right now too after all, aren't you?
Yes, of course you are reading right now, and of course people read on the internet. But what I mean is that on the internet, they read in a different, less extensive and less attentive manner.

The reason for this is simple: Distractions.


Compare these two situations:


versus

So What to Do About It?

The internet is not made for reading.

The solution is obvious: You must catch your reader's attention, and you must catch it instantly....Metaphorically speaking, of course.

And the easiest and most efficient way to do so is through visuals.
Notice the way I emphasize words and paragraphs here?

Please note that all of this will not magically make everybody comment on your work, but it may increase the chances of your stuff actually being read and taken notice of.
This will also not guarantee that everyone will fawn over your writing. Not everyone will find the same things as you interesting.

What I am doing here is to try and give you some things to consider before worrying about content.
We will mainly concentrate on two things: Readability and Flow

1. Punctuation

This one should be common sense: punctuation.
Yes, punctuation. Punctuation was invented for a reason so we might as well use it.

When you talk, you make stops, you take a breath between parts, you raise and lower your voice. You go up with your voice at the end of a question and go down when you finish a sentence. In written language, intonation translates into punctuation.

• Punctuation exists to improve the reader's flow.
  
• Punctuation exists to avoid walls of text.
  
• Punctuation exists to structurize and to organize.
  
• Punctuation exists to avoid misunderstandings.

Also, punctuation makes you look literate. You don't see a fiction book written all in lower letters without any commas, dots and question marks, do you?


Two popular examples. Compare:




If you're unsure, here is a wonderful and easy to understand guide on punctuation.

2. Capitalization

Capitalization falls into the same category as punctuation. Lack of proper capitalization will confuse your reader and disrupt the reading flow. Just as with punctuation, a lack of capitalization will create an intimidating wall-of-text-look.

You capitalize a letter at the beginning of a sentence, you capitalize "I", and you capitalize names. You also capitalize titles. In poems, it is common to capitalize the first letter of each line.

Here is a quick overview of capitalization rules.

3. Paragraphs

This is probably one of the most important aspects: Paragraphs.

Paragraphs, paragraphs, paragraphs. I cannot stress this enough:
Please use paragraphs.

Paragraphs break up your text. They seperate one thought from another. They organize and de-clutter your writing. They indicate the end of something and the beginning of something else.
In short: Paragraphs are the ultimate weapon against walls of text.


The art of paragraphing can be quite tricky. Too many paragraphs and your writing will look like a scattered puzzle, too few and your reader will mentally suffocate.

Thankfully, the ability of using paragraphs works intuitively for most. If not, the internet is always here to help us out.

4. Line Length

Line Length is — drum roll — the length of a line.

Basically it is whether one sentence stretches over the whole of your screen or takes up one third of it. Guess which one is easier to read?

Exactly! Shorter lines are easier to read than long 300-character lines because with long lines the eye easier gets lost and needs to find the next line. With a shorter line length, everything lies in the ideal field of vision.

Line length does a big difference and it's not hard to do, so please don't be lazy. Here, I've even done it for you:
<div style="width:700px; overflow:auto;"> text </div>

This is all you need. Really. Please just use it.

There are a lot of different formulas for picking the ideal line length. Most people say that it's best to have about 12 words in one line, or 50-75 characters.

5. Text Align

Text Align is a less known term for many. It means whether your text is aligned to the left, centered, or to the right.

Something that probably even fewer people know is that, though mostly subconsciously, text align plays an important role in how easy it is to read a text.

Yes, it really does make a difference whether you center your text, glue it to the right side of the page or keep it on the left.
(And whether you use 'justify', for that matter.)

So please use left-aligned text for your stories and writings. It's easier to follow.

What most people don't know is that left-aligned text is optimal because we are used to reading left-to-right, so our eyes are able to automatically jump to the beginning of the next line without much effort.

What most people don't know is that centering our text slows down reading because our eye has to actively search for the beginning of the next line first, especially if the lines differ a lot in their length.

What most people don't know is that aligning our text to the right slows down reading because we are used to reading left-to-right and as with centered text, our eyes have to locate the beginning of the next line first.

6. Formatting

Actually, anything you do with text that goes beyond typing it up is Formatting it. We'll concentrate just on three aspects:
Size, style and colour.

You use formatting such as bold, underline or italics to highlight an important passage and to draw attention to it. When writing a fictional text, you probably won't use a lot of formatting (except italics for emphasis) in the way I do here because it isn't necessarry.

Font size

The font size used here is ideal at 11px, it's best to just leave it as it is.

What looks good on your screen might be unreadable for others. We know too well that big fonts look obnoxious and too small fonts are a pain to read.

It's good to vary font sizes for titles and subtitles as well as anything else you want to set apart from your normal text.

Font style

Especially for speech parts the temptation can be big to use a "different" font to set the character apart. I would not recommend it because it disturbs the reading flow, but if you really have to, use a readable and web-safe font.

Chances are if you use some obscure "interesting" font that no one will be able to see it anyway because they don't have it installed on their computer.

Also, never use Comic Sans.
Ever.

Font colour

Many people use colour to distinguish speech from normal text. Especially if you don't start a new line for every speech (which you should), it's a good way of breaking up the text and structurizing it.

Still, you have to be careful with colours. You can use as "unique" colours as you want, if they clash with the background or don't contrast enough to the point of being unreadable, noone is going to bother.

And no, gradients and rainbows are not the good way to go.


Compare:

Conclusion

So today we have learned that people will be more inclined to read if:

• we use proper punctuation and capitalization
  
• we have paragraphs that break up our writing
  
• our line-length is not too long and not too short
  
• we make people read left to right because it's most comfortable
  
• our text is as simple and easy to look at as possible
  

We now also know that anything off the norm requires more concentration and that small things can make a huge difference.

Did you scroll down here first before reading? You're probably scanning the page at the moment.
If you start reading now or if you already read up until this point, then I probably have succeeded. :)