Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 39, No. 356.
        Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
                      Hosted by DH-Cologne
                       www.dhhumanist.org
                Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org




        Date: 2026-03-05 07:56:57+00:00
        From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
        Subject: catching and keeping the attention of a reader

Dear colleagues,

E-mail in the mode implemented for Humanist is a challenging
medium. It excludes the otherwise usual typographic means for 
emphasis and so throws us back to questions of layout. It's even 
more primitive than the design principles that the most conservative 
newspaper has to work with. Faced with this problem of how to 
direct the reader's attention, some resort to profligate use of 
asterisks and other non-alphabetic symbols, such as those 
which typographers have called 'dingbats'. For a reason, I'd 
suppose.

It seems to me, especially in the context of a discussion group 
such as Humanist, that by far the most effective means of catching 
and keeping the reader's attention is semantic and rhetorical. 
Having something to say and saying it well.

Against style and meaning is the notion that we're dealing with 
'information', close to the primitive sense intended by Claude 
Shannon, as if how a text is presented visually makes no difference 
to how it is received. I would suggest this test to anyone before 
posting a message intended to be read: to ask, would I read this 
through? Even more: would someone indifferent to the announced 
subject or activity be persuaded to pay attention? Then ask, if the 
answer is NO, what would be required to fix what is wrong with the 
approach taken? Do the 48 asterisks contribute to getting the 
intended message through? Is the paragraphing effective to that 
end? Where does the eye need a rest? What does not need to be 
said? Ho do I wake my reader up? And so on. 

Comments?

All best,
WM
--
Willard McCarty,
Professor emeritus, King's College London;
Editor, Interdisciplinary Research in the Arts,
   Sciences and Humanities (Berghahn); Humanist
www.mccarty.org.uk


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