a) I tend to find most dichotomies to be false anyway. The only exception I can think of would be life/death. (I forget who said, “All deaths are sudden: you’re alive, you’re alive, you’re alive, you’re alive… your dead.”) So outside of a clinical context, we’re destined to put one argument against another when, typically, the answer is somewhere in between.

b) I routinely tell my clients that people don’t read online I suppose I should be more specific: people don’t ready boring, inarticulate, self-serving techno/financial/business-jargon. (Then again, it’s usually someone on my client’s staff who’s written said jargon, so it’s perhaps a point better left implied.)

c) Indeed

d) I’m not sure I agree that the availability of hypertext relieves us of the responsibility to write cogently, thoughtfully, and efficiently (though I’m not sure you’re saying that it does, either.) Good copy is neither too short nor too long – it’s appropriate to the context, the message and the reader’s task.

e) I had to roll out this tired consulting chestnut, but it depends: people read recipe books differently when they’re looking to plan a dinner than when they’re actually cooking; people search for diapers on Amazon differently than they read nytimes.com on Sunday morning. Task relevance, is all I’m sayin’.

Thanks for the comments!

a) Task-focused vs. browsing is more of a continuum than a binary state. As anyone who telecommutes to work knows, it’s entirely possible to be task-focused and to still get distracted by peripheral events. And novelty is the best bet for doing that.

b) Anyone who tells you people don’t read online is an idiot. People read anything that interests them, and oftentimes great articles or product copy or reviews of things that interest people can be found online, where those same people read that stuff. This very blog post is a perfect example of that.

c) what people fail to read online is dishonest, vague, we-we, corporate-style crap. But that has nothing to do with it being online and everything to do with it being shit copy.

d) Through the magic of hyperlinks, we don’t have to worry about length anymore. People who want to drill down on more details can select the links that allow them to do that – and they get the long copy they want. People who want to move forward with the sale can click on the links that will move them forward. Voila: readers now get the best of both worlds – but only if the long copy and associated links exist on the site, which requires the copywriter and web designer to summarily bitch slap anyone vomiting up the phrase “people don’t read online”

e) While people read online, they read differently than if they’re reading a book. Rather than reading a whole page and going to the next page in a linear fashion, they read from one link that interests them to the next link that interests them. This means that it helps to fashion your online content to facilitate scanning, and specifically scanning for links. Descriptive headlines and subheadlines help. Bolding helps. Shorter paragraphs help. Bullet points help. And using standard web conventions (colored and underlined text) for links helps a lot.

Anywho, sorry to spew all that up on your comments section, but I felt that your thoughtful post deserved some equally thoughtful responses.