By Crawford Kilian Content Spotlight columnist We're beginning to understand that Web text should be shorter than text on paper. Seven words instead of 13.
Web users tend to scan text rather than read it line by line.
So cutting overall length by half makes it easier both to scan and to understand. Even if high-resolution monitors become available soon, enabling us to read screen text as rapidly as print, I suspect that users' scanning habits will be hard to break. So brevity will be the soul not only of wit, but of Web writing. Web writers, however, usually have habits formed by reading print on paper. Chances are we got interested in writing because we liked reading rich, evocative text on paper.