Maybe all you bloggers reading here already know this. I did not until Jim Conley, who keeps the well-read On Brookline blog, came to visit today. Though he visited for different purposes, it wasn't long until we lept off to my beloved topic of writing (and blogging). Jim teaches writing to prospective communicators at Emerson College and thus has an opinion or two about what works online.
Turns out, bloggerinos, that people read screens in what researcher Jakob Nielsen dubbed an F-pattern.
We skim the top lines relatively quickly, moving across the screen (left to right*).
Then work our way down the screen.
Reading a bit here.
And there.
So
if
you
want
people
to read...
Enough of that. Get the point? How did people discover this? Heat tracking studies of eye movements. Ironically, or coincidentally, or neither, we happened to have a tour of the Fidelity Center for Applied Technology (yes, as in Fidelity Investments) last week, where we looked into one lab where they were tracking subjects' eye movements. Wish I'd known then what I know now. Henceforth, dear readers, watch for my posts to be very F-y.
*Is it a mirror F for the right to left languages? Jakob, where are you?
For a more detailed description of what he found, jump:
From Nielsen's study, F-Shaped Pattern for Reading Web Content:
This dominant reading pattern looks somewhat like an F and has the following three components:
- Users first read in a horizontal movement, usually across the upper part of the content area. This initial element forms the F's top bar.
- Next, users move down the page a bit and then read across in a second horizontal movement that typically covers a shorter area than the previous movement. This additional element forms the F's lower bar.
- Finally, users scan the content's left side in a vertical movement. Sometimes this is a fairly slow and systematic scan that appears as a solid stripe on an eyetracking heatmap. Other times users move faster, creating a spottier heatmap. This last element forms the F's stem.
And here are some of the study's guidelines for writing web content, always helpful.
