[This borders on “for geeks only” territory. But I think it’s worth at least some attention if you aspire to get — and keep — a reading audience for your words on the Web.]
A highly respected site for Web-site designers, typographers, and so on, is called A List Apart. It’s been around for years, freely dispensing advice and information from various experts on how to make pages look good and behave properly.
You may or may not know that a given page looks differently when viewed in one Web browser vs. another (Firefox vs. Internet Explorer vs. Safari vs. Opera vs. whatever); even if you know that, though, you may not know why you perhaps should care… let alone what to do about it. If that bothers you, and if you’re not too intimidated by tech subjects presented gracefully, A List Apart needs to be in your bookmarks list.
Regardless of your expertise, I want to draw your attention to a recent article by Mandy Brown, “In Defense of Readers.” It will be of interest to anyone placing his or or her words online, in an environment — like a blog — where one hopes or expects to attract readers as well as mere visitors.
The piece is hard to pull an excerpt from, because the temptation is just to copy-n-paste the whole thing. Here’s a sample, though:
The best readers are obstinate. They possess a nearly inexhaustible persistence that drives them to read, regardless of the circumstances they find themselves in. I’ve seen a reader absorbed in Don Quixote while seated at a noisy bar; I’ve witnessed the quintessential New York reader walk the streets with a book in hand; of late I’ve seen many a reader devour books on their iPhone (including one who confessed to reading the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy while scrolling with his thumb)…
What each of these readers has in common is an ability to create solitude under circumstances that would seem to prohibit it. Reading is a necessarily solitary experience — like dying, everyone reads alone — but over the centuries readers have learned how to cultivate that solitude, how to grow it in the least hospitable environments. An experienced reader can lose herself in a good text with anything short of a war going on (and, sometimes, even then) — the horticultural equivalent of growing orchids in a desert.
Brown discusses various strategies readers use to insulate themselves from their surroundings. Then she gets into what makes this article particularly relevant to A List Apart‘s audience:
…The key is not to halt all activity around a reader, but to give her her space. (Remember the girl reading Quixote at the bar? You want to order your drink without bumping into her.)
In practice, this means you need to limit distractions to the full extent possible. Pull quotes — so effective near the top of an article — become a nuisance further down; many readers will find themselves unconsciously drawn to them, even when they want to focus on the text. Attention to the basic typographic details — line length, a readable typeface, the right balance between font size and line height, appropriate contrast between the text and background — can make the difference between a reader who makes it to the end of the article versus one who tires and gives up.
And so on.
Now, I know that many bloggers (especially of the writing sort) simply use built-in themes and templates. They have neither the time nor training nor, really, the inclination to go diving into the mysteries of Web-page makeup and adjusting every little thing that might make their pages even slightly less readable.
And yet, and yet…
Just ask somebody what s/he thinks could be improved, especially if it’s someone you know wants to read your blog. If s/he could change just one thing about the way your blog looks, what would it be?
Now think about that.
Think, further, of your experience in a bookstore. In just browsing with no particular book in mind, have you ever found one with an alluring cover which enticed you to open it up, perhaps read a paragraph or a page? If so, have you ever put it back because the text was too small or crowded, the margins too narrow? No, you say — that wasn’t why you put it back.
Are you sure?
(For that matter, if — when — your next book is published, do you care at all what the pages look like, how they feel?)
Even if you yourself can’t do anything about the “look” of your blog, you owe it to your audience — and to your words — to bring readers to the page and keep them there… to provide for their visual comfort as well as the intellectual sort. If need be, get a techie friend or relative (or your site’s administrator/designer!) to brainstorm it with you.
But first, check the List Apart article.
And yes, I’m going to be making some adjustments myself. If anyone reading this has suggestions, please let me know!
Tessa says
Thank you so much for this, John. I would like to acquire more expertise, because I feel so helpless sometimes, wondering why my blog is doing what it’s doing and why. I’ve even (promise you won’t tell anyone) gone so far as to get a copy of WordPress for Dummies!
The only change I would make on your site is to do something about the Facebook, Twitter, Tracked for Free (I think – can’t see them clearly) badges up in the top left corner of the centre column. I thought it was my Safari that was causing them to obscure the beginning of every new post, but the same is happening when I open you in Firefox. Have you any idea why that is?
John says
Tessa: Thank you for that feedback! In Windows & Linux Firefox and Opera, and in Windows Internet Explorer, those items appear at the bottom of the left sidebar — below the ADMIN section. It may be something about the Mac display (regardless of browser)… but I’ve way too many site visitors who use Macs — how embarrassing that I had no idea until now. I feel like I’ve been wandering around in an open bathrobe, with toilet paper stuck to the bottom of a sandal. :)
Since I’m (probably obviously) in the process of tinkering with the look right now, I’ll address that immediately.
Thanks again, Tessa.
(Btw, I’ve got the WP for Dummies book too — indisipensable!)
John says
Tessa: It should be positioned okay now. Let me know if you stop back here again… thank you thank you thank you. :)
marta says
Oh, yes, the facebook etc over the beginning of each post! I thought it was just me. But it is fine now. Sorry I didn’t mention it sooner.
I use those free templates and am reasonably happy, but I would love to make them better–because, horror of horrors, appearance matters to me. I care about fonts and colors and layout and spacing… But I don’t know how to change anything and so I just live with what wordpress gives me.
I admit to putting books back and passing over blogs because they were ugly. Call me shallow. Or call me a Libra–I’ve heard Libras are especially prone to being bothered by outside appearances.
My fiction blog (back up by the way!) changed templates at least ten times. I think I like the current one…
Kate Lord Brown says
Excellent points here John – I’m with Marta, regularly pass over blogs/sites if I don’t like the typography. I went with basic template because it was the cleanest – maybe boring but knew I wanted images/multimedia without clutter. All looks good on RAMH from this end!
John says
marta: No problem, glad it seems to be working okay now.
One of the most scarifying things about changing the look of a WordPress blog (like yours, Tessa’s, and mine) is that there’s no built-in preview feature. You change something and if it breaks, it breaks — you can’t “undo” the changes. But I just found a plugin that should help, called Theme Preview. But it looks a little clunky (although recently, in December). If it turns out to be decent I’ll pass the word.
(Congrats on the fiction blog… have to get offline imminently but will check it out in the next couple days!)
Kate: Boring is infinitely better than “too interesting” when it comes to readability! Thanks for the feedback.
(Oh, btw, a long time ago I disabled that little webcam thingy on WKDN. It didn’t bother me that it was there but it slowed Web browsing to a c-r-a-w-l when I was in Linux, which I usually am when at home.)
Hmm, great recaptcha for a Saturday: 90-Proof rifled. I’m there!
Querulous Squirrel says
I haven’t read the article yet, but will. I was shocked when I first peeked at my old blog at work — no longer do so now that I realize work spies on workers, but the colors and sizes were all different distorted and…ugly. I was horrified. Also, the font was bigger. Also, for the longest time, I refused to read blogs with tiny font. I thought they were rude and inconsiderate. Only recently did I realize I can increase the size myself. Until then, I spent countless hours perfecting my font size. I really mean countless. Now that I’ve played around with it, I have no idea what size it really is, like Alice in Wonderland. As for the To Be Continued Post, frankly…I never continue. Never. But this one was intriguing. So I continued. I generally find them extremely annoying. But I am at the extreme end of extremely annoyed, so you have to go by the average, and if your blog is interesting enough, which yours is, obviously, you can draw people in. But, I have to say, I don’t see the purpose, because then, do people really go back and read the next post which they would if it came right after which I would definitely do, in fact always do?? It’s like, even in the newspaper, I never flip to the “to be continued” unless it’s a murder case, so I’m not discriminating or anything. Hope that helps. Thanks for the article, though. And the willingness to accept honest feedback. I hope. Gulp. ???????
John says
Squirrel: Now see, this is interesting. (I’m assuming when you say the “To be continued” you’re talking about the way I show the Read more… links for all the stories which show up on the RAMH home page.)
What’s interesting is that I thought of it as a convenience to readers. I don’t do the “Read more” thing on short posts (which I very seldom write, as you may have noticed :). If I didn’t do that, someone coming to my home page would be confronted with an overwhelming mass of text, when 9 times out of 10 (or thereabouts) people coming to my home page just want to see what I’m writing about in the last day or two. What I mean is, I don’t want to assume people want to read the whole blessed thing.
(Theoretically, it also means I could get a vague handle on which openings work best to pull readers past the home page, with the little Sitemeter thingy. But I’ve never used it for that and have no idea how I’d even begin such an analysis.)
A table-of-contents style home page: way too short. An excerpts-only home page (or so I’d hoped): gives readers a chance to orient themselves and answer the “do I want to continue?” question.
Oh, I just thought of something else: do you use Google Reader or something like it, to keep tabs on blogs you follow? That way you never have to look at someone’s home page again; you get a post title and a blog name, and when you click on the former you see the post’s contents right there in the Google (or whatever) window. You don’t (I think???) get the “Read more….” teaser.
You’ve given me something to chew on. Thanks so much!
Tessa says
@John – Way better now. Thank you, John.
John says
Tessa — thank YOU for mentioning it!
Querulous Squirrel says
John: as I said. Don’t listen to me. I just thought you might want an Outlier’s perspective. I have no idea how to check sitemeter or Google Reader for all that stuff except the most basics. I am a very primitive blogger. I use drumsticks to type. Chicken ones.
John says
Squirrel: Outliers are important. Thanks again! (And typing with chicken bones, while… unorthodox, certainly isn’t forbidden or “wrong.” Just don’t try to gnaw on them.)