Distributed by curators in WRITING
Why Reading Is Becoming Skimming on the Internet
The writers have only ten seconds to persuade the reader
Everyone can say whatever they like on blogging and social media platforms. The readers have to decide whether they want to read an article or not.
They like to skim and scan an article before deciding to read it.
Professor Maryanne Wolf, Director of the Center for Dyslexia at UCLA, says that skimming is the new normal, and it is affecting society profoundly. She explains in an article in The Guardian, “When the reading brain skims texts, we don’t have time to grasp complexity, to understand another’s feelings or to perceive beauty. We need a new literacy for the digital age.”
The new literacy can be based on a deeper understanding of the issue. What is the enemy of a good reading experience?
How can you write something that grabs the attention of a skimmer and a scanner that they read from the start to the end? For this, you’ll have to know why readers skim and how they scan information on a page.
Why readers skim
The readers are trying to get a quick overview. They have a lot of options. Often they are trying to answer the…
