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WebWord Weblog Posting Posting Date: August 11, 2003 Information Pollution -- (Alertbox) "Saying less often communicates more. Studies of content usability typically find that removing half of a website's words will double the amount of information that users actually get." (Mac Comments: My summary is the 'green' version of the article, so you don't need to read the official polluted version.)
Reader Comments...
Or how about this summary "Information is Theft". “Somewhere the saving and putting away had to begin again and someone had to do the saving and the keeping, one way or another, in books, in records, in people’s heads, any way at all so long as it was safe, free from moths, silverfish, rust and dry-rot, and men with matches.” - From Farenheit 451 Posted by: Mac on August 11, 2003 04:00 AM
With other words - the difference between information and marketing might become very significant. Does it mean Jakob is a spammer himself ;-) Posted by: Gerald on August 11, 2003 08:20 AM
This is all very true. I absolutely hate content-free "corporate-speak", or as Steve Krug calls it, "Happy Talk". It also illustrates why the principle of Progressive Disclosure works so well. When I first heard of it, I wondered how hiding information would be a good thing. But anyone who has ever cleaned their desk realizes why it works. Here's a great example from Scott Berkun:
If there were any good ideas about information, it might be offering a way to change things, not just rail against them. This is an explosion of data, and data processing technology marketed as information technology. Posted by: on August 11, 2003 12:26 PM
Reminds me of an anecdote I heard in a writing class. A student approached [famous author -- we'll use Kurt Vonnegut] with a fat manuscript and asked for advice. [Author] asked how long it was, and student answered, "300 pages." [Author]'s response was, "Throw away the first 100 pages and you're done." And Strunk (globally-revered author of the definitive book on writing) wrote, "omit needless words."
As I recall, Steve Krug did Strunk one better in his book "Don't Make Me Think" by crossing out the "needless." His third law of usability is "Get rid of half the words on each page... then get rid of half of what's left." Posted by: Calybos on August 15, 2003 08:07 AM
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