It is not how much information there is, but rather how effectively it is arranged. (Edward Tufte)

I agree with this statement up to a certain point. Of course, in a typical situation this is spot on. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve flagged “grey blocks of text,” I’d be retired now. Honestly, it’s funny how frequently and consistently that comes up.

I never really tried to analyze why, but off the top of my head, I would guess it’s how all writers are trained. And that goes all the way back to grade school. Think about it. What did Miss Thistlebottom at Woodrow Wilson Elementary School want? Big grey blocks of text – each preferably with topic and summary sentences (and none of those beginning with a conjunction or ending in a preposition)!  And something similar continued through middle school, and high school, and college. The whole point was to show that you had understood a particular topic by writing about it at length. You were also trying to impress teacher with just how darn smart you were. Wordiness was something to be encouraged. Long paragraphs and sentences were a good thing.

I’ve actually seen something even for college-level students who were in writing programs. And, here, I don’t mean creative writing, but journalism, and marcomm, and even professional writing. A newspaper article, a marketing brochure, a press release are not, however, all that different from what they were writing back in 6th grade – at least in terms of structure and look, if not in quality.

Everything, though, changes when you go online. We all know that people don’t want to be made to think (thanks, Steve Krug), but it just so happens that they also don’t want to be made to read. Instead, they are much more likely to want to scan and skim. 

Now, I’m not necessarily talking about an online article here (in those situations, readers are apt to “scan and swoop”). What I’m talking about is someone trying to complete a task – sign up for something, shop for something, pay for something, find some bit of information, make a decision, do something other than just read for pleasure.

In those cases, readers will scan and skim. And the smart writer will be sure to support that strategy. And that includes using lots of chunking, plenty of lists, more titles than seem necessary, and some way to emphasize keywords. There’s no better description of that strategy (and why it’s so necessary) than some research that Nielsen Norman started doing way back in 1997.

Returning to Tufte’s maxim … 90% of the time, he’s got it nailed. In some cases, though, there really is just too much stuff. I know. I’ve seen that too.

I’ll bet Tufte never thought in a million years that 

he would be roped into a discussion about writing