RodeWorks

Here is an interesting study by Jakob Nielsen on reading patters on the web.  I imagine that this applies to any reading on a computer monitor, and validates much of what I’ve picked up from other sources.  And what it says to me is lots of text on a computer monitor doesn’t get read!  So if you want to communicate something with text do like Jakob says:

F-Shaped Pattern For Reading Web Content (Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox)

* Users won’t read your text thoroughly in a word-by-word manner. Exhaustive reading is rare, especially when prospective customers are conducting their initial research to compile a shortlist of vendors. Yes, some people will read more, but most won’t.

* The first two paragraphs must state the most important information. There’s some hope that users will actually read this material, though they’ll probably read more of the first paragraph than the second.

* Start subheads, paragraphs, and bullet points with information-carrying words that users will notice when scanning down the left side of your content in the final stem of their F-behavior. They’ll read the third word on a line much less often than the first two words.

Detailed Scanning Behaviors