From copy to content

Because of the Web, we've changed the way we view written language. We've dispensed with both prose and poetry. Even the term 'copy' is a relic from the pleistocene.

Today, it's all about content. Although it's been impossible to escape the fact that the Web is still inherently a text-based medium, many people would like to. So we see strong, persuasive paragraphs treated as little more than a shape; a square to be squashed in between tables. Deft insight is choked by pixel padding.

Of course, since everyone isn't a web designer, we still see plenty of the converse: oceans of text the line length of which stretches from screen edge to screen edge. Paragraph breaks lose all meaning, and reader attention peters out long before the writer's thoughts do.

Visual presentation is important, and both of these extremes illustrate how form (or lack thereof) can obfuscate function. The same psychology used to develop the modern newspaper (use of different text weights, sizes and typefaces, placement on the page etc.) applies to readers sitting in front of a screen. It's when we forget that viewers are readers and readers are viewers that the problems begin.