Scannability revisited
By Kristoffer Bohmann, Bohmann Usability
Scannability revisited. Writers who make their texts scannable should do so with care. It is by now common knowledge that writers should make their online writings scannable. This is usually done by adding bold text, bulleted lists, links, and new paragraphs. Still, using these text layout techniques should be done in a moderate way.
- Too many bulleted lists on a page makes the text hard to read. If everything is bulleted you may just as well remove the bullets.
- Making entire sentences or even paragraphs bold or linked work against the purpose: To guide the user's attention.
- Proving too many links in a text adds confusion as users become more focused on figuring out what's behind each link than reading the present text.
Kristoffer Bohmann
