A common practice among bloggers is to mark out sections of text with boldface type in order to call attention to that portion of a paragraph. It’s said to be a reading aid, to make the article more skimmable.
Is it really necessary? Should we be making it easier for people to half-read articles? Also, doesn’t it strike you as a bit condescending? Sometimes it bothers me. It’s like the author thinks I’m stupid and that I need to be directed to what I should pay attention to.
Has out society progressed (regressed?) to a point where people’s attention spans are too short to sit through a moderate-length article? Do people expect to be fed sound bites instead of real information?
On the other hand, skimming is useful in that it can help you get the gist of a post quickly, enabling you to speed through a lot of news items in a short space of time.
What do you think? Is it helpful to mark out an important sentence or two in each paragraph in bold text, or is it condescending and bad for society’s intellectual well-being?
