Education Writers Need To Catch Up

In the last 5 years the means by which the written word can be delivered to readers have evolved at a pace unlike anything we have experienced in the last several hundred years. Today a reader can not only access the written word on his or her mobile laptop (old hat) but also cell phones, Kindles, Sony e-readers, and I-pads. What knows what's next. (Avatar would suggest words floating in space.) As a result, reader's expectations as to the format and content of word delivery (writing) have changed: 1. Attention spans are painfully short. Readers appreciate writers who understand that "less is more." Readers want the skinny with no extra words or filler. As said by Blaire Pascal in the 17th century, at the end of a long letter to his friend, "I am sorry for the length of this letter; it would have been much shorter if I had more time." 2. The internet has heightened the desire for specific information, fast and furious. The internet is a meeting place of gazillions of words generally organized by topic. When someone wants information, they go online. They Google the topic of interest. They retrieve the information they seek... and they move on. No time for exposition, examples or build-ups. Just give me the bottom line. In and out. A staccato reading experience. 3. The online reading experience includes lot of visual (and audio) stimulation. Line after line of just text is totally boring to the electronic-age reader. Short, punchy sentences. Lots of visual and maybe audio. Stimulate or perish! 4. The delivery of text on a printed page does not break the same way on electronic readers. In preparing the printed page, the publisher can end sentences and paragraphs at the end of a page. Thus, the reader hits a natural break when turning a page. But, on electronic readers - e.g., the cell phone or Kindle - the page break often does not mesh with the screen size. Therefore the reading experience can be unnatural - scrolling or clicking in the middle of thoughts. 5. Electronic-age readers are changing up the alphabet. Our 26-letter alphabet has worked for about 5,000 years. Time for change. Texting and twittering writers and readers are creating a shorthand language that works just fine. My point? 99% of what writers are producing today is rooted in a style and format that has been around since Ben Franklin. But, the "same old, same old" is not going to work anymore. Some writers and publishers get it. I applaud Jeff Kinney's Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. I congratulate Yen Publishing for its 350,000 copy first-run graphic book, Twilight: Part I. (Yes, I understand this is Stephanie Meyers but still, most first runs of graphic novels are about 20,000 copies.) Some writers and publishers are experimenting at the edges. Others will start doing so.

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