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climate change
September 2009 
On Writing Style...
Posted on Dec 3rd, 2007
by 
Zet White
Zet White
Just to note that in my blogs and pod posts and comments I tend to highlight parts of my text like this. It may sometimes seem strange why I have highlighted this thing and not that one, or in such particular order etc. This is merely to make it easier for readers to skip through my often quite long texts and still grasp the main points I'm trying to make there.
One of the main issues with Zaadz communication (and any forums for that matter) is the amount of text generated. With all respect to their authors, upon seeing a large body of text with minimal or absent paragraphing or highlighting, I often just skip it all. Time is scarce, we all know that. Usually what follows is someone quoting a sentence from that text later and asking to clarify. Bingo - now I know what that was all about! :)
That is why I think it is worth encouraging strategical highlighting, it proves to be very useful, to me at least. I try to highlight in such a way that, if someone reads only the highlighted text, they still end up reading a coherent flow of ideas and miss very little. I know full well how a lot of highlighting and especially CAPITALISING can put readers off, but I hope we all learn a difference between unnecessary and very useful highlighting. And act on it.
One of the main issues with Zaadz communication (and any forums for that matter) is the amount of text generated. With all respect to their authors, upon seeing a large body of text with minimal or absent paragraphing or highlighting, I often just skip it all. Time is scarce, we all know that. Usually what follows is someone quoting a sentence from that text later and asking to clarify. Bingo - now I know what that was all about! :)
That is why I think it is worth encouraging strategical highlighting, it proves to be very useful, to me at least. I try to highlight in such a way that, if someone reads only the highlighted text, they still end up reading a coherent flow of ideas and miss very little. I know full well how a lot of highlighting and especially CAPITALISING can put readers off, but I hope we all learn a difference between unnecessary and very useful highlighting. And act on it.
Access: Public
I like it!
I almost always skip long posts.
Short attentions span?
Life is precious! Time is of the essence.
Good Idea.
Zet.. nice to read this. I've been learning (from others) to highlight the names of people whose comments I refer to so if they do a page scan, they will easily see if someone has picked up on what they wrote.
And, I completely agree with you, there is so much text - how can we make ourselves more 'readable' and concise? ( and fun to read). Your use of bold and underlined text on the ThinkTank thread was 'interesting' for me, it landed as very direct, which I wasn't sure I liked, but I realised it was only because I wasn't used to it.
I use italics a lot, because I write fiction, and it is one of the only ways to accent a word in that medium. If italics are overused, however, the writing looks amateur and sloppy, so yes to learning the difference between unnecessary and very useful highlighting.
Thanks for your presence here.
Sandra.
Thanks Shanti!
Sanrda, I see your point… Perhaps you're right, bold text can be too… direct. I will take this on and try underlining for a while then. Perhaps I really should switch my use of bold and underline around. Thank you!
Zet, I'm not sure, I like both (underlining and bold) and perhaps using italics too.. I'm not sure of the 'effect' of each one, I'm actually quite curious and am going to experiment to see if each has a certain flavour / impression. Capitals definitely imply SHOUTING to me, so that's clear, but the other 3, I'm not sure yet.
Love,
Sandra
Its all just glyphs on a white page to me
Thank god books use mostly plain type
Yes I agree about books :-) ..but I only read novels so that area is clear to me ( ie I don't want any fiddling with the fonts please) but given my involvement online - on zaadz, on my pod and researching info elsewhere on the 'net, I'm all for making text more readable, clearer etc. Either that or I have to learn speed-reading.
It really is just glyphs on a white page, actually… :)
Oh, but scientific books for example are excellent at highlighting and summarising. Examples boxed out, definitions highlighted and explained separately, separate numbered sections for summarising man points… It definitely won't work for novels though! I just chuckled imagining something like:
“…And then she turned and looked wearily at the slow, settling sun, and as it reddened the horizon even further, her eyes filled with bitter tears…”
Or maybe it's a pupil doing his English homework… :)
P.S. Good for speedreading, though. =)
scientific books or similar.. YES to highlighting and summarising and personally I would not read a such a book unless it had copious footnotes etc. I seem to remember a book on philosophy that also had little 'side-notes' in the margin. Fabulous.
I think I just might throw up if novels took up underlining and bolding!!! We ( writers) do enough damage with too many adverbs (and adjectives) anyway. (eg my attempt a the Truly Bad Writing assignment on Diving Deeper here).
Love,
S..
Good idea Zet!
As one who is very fond of the written word, and who's been a journalist and PR professional, I agree that there are times when ideas can and should be capsulized. And then there are times when it's good to fully explore and play with an idea.
I guess it's the difference between fast food and slow food. There are times when a burger and fries fit the bill, but other times when it's great to just sit and savour.
For me, Zaadz is about exploring ideas and sharing information. I kinda like it when someone takes the time to put some thought into what he/she writes and flesh out the idea. However, short can be sweet, too.
I would just love a computerised word mapping facility, We all think that way and it is fantastic for marshalling thoughts into coherent order. Sigh! Guess it will take a while for that to come.!! Meantime italics bold and plain can usefully highlight text and even separate out two or three separate voices.