I'm just going to do a short one today. I don't really have the time to do anything really belabored or involved. But I was wondering about something odd. It seems like an article-writer in the print press, one of those column-writing people, a humorist for instance...the sheer amount of words that gets put out in each column is pretty substantial. Someone mentioned Dave Barry before. One of that guy's essays would - if you put it into a blog post - it would just keep going and going on forever. It would be huge! You'd be halfway through it, "get to the point, dude!" Yet, when you read that same essay in the paper or in a compilation of some kind, you say to yourself, "Humorous! Delightful! Bite-sized!"
Why is that? Is it the glow of the screen? Is it to do with electromagnetic field interference from the computer, disrupting your brain's beta waves? Or is it some unknown third factor. What is it, that makes light-hearted writing wear on the reader at an accelerated rate online, as opposed to in print?
Apart from the noticeable and substantial drop in quality, obviously.
3 comments:
I absolutely think it has to do with the screen. You're not meant to read off a light source. And print media is carefully composed of beautiful typefaces that were created for paper and developed to be appealing to the eye when it's used in short bursts and easy on the eye when used in long narratives. Of course, people choose fonts for what they wrote on the computer, but generally they choose it because it's pretty or the right size or it's all they've got to choose from.
I was thinking of changing my typeface and background a few weeks ago (I was inspired not only because of readability, but because someone else looks eerily similar. :P) I really did think a change would make things more eye-friendly. But then things looked sort of out of season, and I couldn't find another template that I wanted, and I decided to just leave it. On the computer, you end up more concerned with the gussying up with colors and patterns than the subtleties of the perfect shape of the letters.
It's frustrating to try to work with what you see on a computer and try to make it as beautiful as something you see on paper. Which is weird because in this day and age, almost everything you see on paper originated on a computer. But even the simplest, most readable web pages---check out the New York Times, but don't pay for anything >:(---don't compare to an imperceptibly perfect printed page. When something ends up on paper, it changes everything.
I think everything you've put here is dead-on.
Personally, I picked this blog format because it's the only good-looking dark one, and I think the bright ones are too hard on the eyes.
But seriously, I'll switch if you like. You had it first.
I wish they had more dark ones. Dark speaks to my dark musings.
No, no, don't switch. I was mostly teasing. I say mostly because having them look the same does confuse me sometimes and frustrate me other times, but I also totally understand why you'd choose it (I did!) and sometimes I just don't care at all. So we can focus on those times.
Besides, mine looks like it died now somehow, since all that shows up are dots. :(
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