Burst Blog

We know that you, gentle blogger, already know how to write for the Web. (You do have a blog?)

Today’s post looks a little closer at why Web writing is different from those other kinds.

Flicker Flicker

First, consider the computer screen. Reading on a computer screen is a much harsher experience than reading on paper.

Why?

Your computer screen refreshes 72 times per second. Your large human brain sees this flashing as a “page” of info, but your brainyness has tricked you out of realizing that you might as well be looking into a strobe light. Hello headache!

Moreover, the computer screen is also relatively low-resolution, at 72 dots per square inch: fuzzy.

Paper, on the other hand, does not flash. Paper uses reflected light bouncing off the dark words, which makes for a calmer experience (I’m waiting for the BlogBurst Research Labs to get back to me on the science here…), and print on paper has a much higher resolution — 300 dots per square inch: crisp.

Which is why you can read “War and Peace” on paper, but sometimes it’s hard to get to the bottom of a Perez Hilton post. (One reason.)

Readers Scan

The flicker flicker syndrome is why Web readers don’t read word by word, they scan. Studies have even been done. (Here’s an interesting post from useit.com on how readers scan Web pages.)

That’s why many successful blogs:

• keep it brief and focused
• use short sections with clear titles and other clearly scannable levels of information
• keep long dense documents deeper in the site and link to them from the blog
• use words that anyone can understand

…Except When They Don’t

Now that I’ve beaten you over the head with the importance of brevity and scannability, here’s the bus-sized caveat: Unless your audience likes it some other way.

Some topics invite incredibly long boring dense posts about the finer details of a random topic. One of my faves, The Becker-Posner Blog can spin 2,000 words on Globalization and Inequality, and that’s great because their audience is full of dorks like me who like reading things like that.

But in general: scannable; short; snappy.