By: Lia Contesso
Submitted: 2010-05-03 09:23:40 | Word Count: 597
Some people can read sitting in a noisy bar; there are people walking holding a book in hand and reading. And millions of us read newspapers, magazines and blogs on the screens every day, despite all the statements that today few and few people read.
Reading is a solitary experience, but over the centuries, readers have learned how to cultivate solitude, how to increase it in some less inhospitable environments.
Despite the ubiquity of reading on the web, however, readers more often remain a neglected public. Most of the talk around the web design revolves mostly around a sense of movement: it is thought that users seek, find, look. We measure how often they click, but not how long they are on a page. We take care of their movement and their participation, how they move from page to page, with whom they speak when they arrive there, but we often forget the needs of those whose sole aim is to stay there, still.
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Readers grow when they have space, a minimum distance from the chatter of the crowd, and web companies should still do much to help them find a little more space.
The pre-reading ritual is part of the culture of the book. These behaviors are also found on the web. When you get to the page that contains an article, it is likely that you give a look to the logo to find out where you are, follow the navigation to see what else you can find on the site. Almost certainly you look at the article title, or the photos and illustrations that accompany it. If there is a citation or a summary, probably you read them, just as you read the back cover or the back of the book. Maybe you read the first paragraph, listening to see the voice of the text resonates within you. If at some point during these pre-reading activities you decide that the article is not for you, you just leave the page and go somewhere else. But if there is something that interests you, chances are that you remain there.
There are many readers who will engage in reading, even if the page design does not facilitate this, but the website designers have many ways to assist readers in the transition from watch to read.
Consider all the elements that accompany an article and organize what are the most useful to engage the interest at first. Summaries and citations of relevant passages, as well as illustrations, allow the reader to quickly understand the argument of the article. Categories and links to related content provide context information. The name of who wrote it informs us about the author. All these elements combined create a sort of gateway into the land of reading.
It is likely that the first paragraph (or the firsts, depending on the length of the text) is read differently from those that follow. Often we read more slowly at the beginning of a text, while we familiarize with the authorial voice and decide if we want to continue. Typographical signals as initials in uppercase or setting of the first paragraph with a larger text or a different font can encourage this behavior and facilitate the transition to reading. In a sense the first paragraph should speak with a higher voice than those that follow to engage the reader.
