I’m toying with a few ideas about how to write an article in such a way that people understand what’s been written.
I’m riffing off two things I read yesterday. The first was from a Brian Morrissey article about reducing friction, in which Brian pointed out that friction can be useful in some cases. For example, holding an article on a trending subject to get a better perspective.
Hold that thought.
The second article came from Bo Sacks’ email (here it is on LinkedIn, and it was about the responsibility of journalists to write in a way that accurately communicates difficult information. This was in the context of the whole “disinformation” problem, and it provides some practical tips, like use shorter words, sentences, and paragraphs, slow down the pace of the article, and so on.
In response to Brian’s article, I was musing on the idea of having micro-quizzes in the middle of an article. They’d serve as a check to make sure the reader is understanding what the article is claiming. This could become an interesting engagement tool, where people get points for taking the quiz. Like 1 point for taking it at all, and 3 points for getting the answer right.
If you take that concept along with the second article, an author, or a publisher, could start to get feedback on how well people are understanding what they’re writing.
Unfortunately, a lot of the “disinformation” talk is really about politics and opinions, and I’m not interested in that.
But for people who are writing to convey practical information, pausing to make sure you understand what you’re reading can be a great idea.
I heard Jordan Peterson recommend that when reading a book, you should pause at the end of every page and mentally summarize what the author conveyed on that page. That definitely introduces friction, but I’ll bet it has a dramatic effect on learning and retention.
What if books and articles were written that way?
The “idiot’s guide” genre of books include a lot of that — pulling out summaries and main points and so on.
With online interactivity, this could become an incredibly powerful tool for increasing learning and engagement.
Readers could have very simple tools, like highlighting some text and clicking a “confused face” button, to say “this wasn’t clear to me.”
If a paragraph is often misunderstood – based on user responses – editors could go back and fix it, or provide one of those little (i) things with more information.
The point is that we’ve done so many things to improve websites, and so little to improve digital reading. It’s time we change that.
