style question - italics

[esskay]

Active fl editors, a question for you:

It seems like I'm seeing -- or maybe it's just noticing -- more long sections of text in italics on fanlore pages, especially in the "recs and reviews" type sections of fanworks pages, or in other quoted material, such as on writer style, etc.

In "Writing for the Web" stuff, I used to be taught that on-screen (prior to paper-mimicking screens like the current e-readers have), italics are noticeably harder on the eyes to read than in print, and that on webpages limiting the use of italicized text to several words or a line or two at most was important to prevent eye fatigue.

(And to try to prevent the reader losing focus on the page entirely and skimming or just clicking away. Ditto, re eye-tracking studies and page fatigue, paragraphs longer than 4-6 lines and/or too many longer paragraphs not interspersed with 1-2 line paragraphs on a page of online text.)

I know I've italicized what felt like too much text myself on fanlore quite a few times -- and I am very guilty of long sentences, paragraphs, and text -- trying to figure out what the informal house style seemed to be.

But looking at a page side-by-side where smaller parts are italicized (e.g., the words "Author's Summary:" rather than the entire summary, a few words in a review instead of all of a review) vs. a page where larger chunks of text are italicized, I notice my eyes are more willing to read all or most of the text in the fewer-italics page.

So I'm wondering (well partly, if the difference I discern is just habit (or tired eyes) of mine)
- if there's a lot of italicized text on fanlore pages because the old notions about italics and eye-fatigue in online reading have long since been rebutted by accessibility and eye-tracking research folks and I shouldn't worry about it*
- if we're italicizing a lot of text out of habit without thinking about how it affects the readability of a page
- (other options)?

And if it should be the case that most of the italicizing has happened out of habit and online readability guidelines are still in favor of fewer italics, would active editors be willing to consider reducing the amount/length of italicized text they use in new pages they create?


*If yes, I would love links to current studies!

Comments

[morgandawn]

I could not find any reference to blockquotes (or any form of quote) on the Cheatsheet . Ditto on the advanced editing page (unless it is buried on an diff named subpage). Might help to have something there - at the very least the actual code.

[esskay]

There's info on it here: http://fanlore.org/wiki/Help:Formatting#Indented_Text_and_Long_Quotations but that's on the more extensive Help: Formatting page, not the cheatsheet.

And I don't know about the history of fanlore, if it's as averse to giving explicit ideas about/guidance on a house style for readability the same way the AO3 has (historically, though it sounds as though that might be changing at some point?) been averse to giving explicit guidance on tagging for the ease of readers rather than having it be a, in the case of AO3, self-tagging for writers' guidanceless-because-of-philosophy thing, while in the case of fanlore if there was a similar concept I imagine it might have been a strong notion that every individual editor should create or add to pages in whatever way they individually like most without (a lot of) check-ins on non-editor usability?

But if it isn't a deeply entrenched philosophical thing to not give ideas or guidance on things that work well from a (reader) usability perspective, then maybe it'd be good to make suggested-formatting pages more explicit -- and easier to find or bookmark. Or if it has been a deeply entrenched philosophical thing, maybe it's time to revisit....

(Not that I'm advocating a Wikipedia-type level of rules and regulations and wars around telling people what the only correct way to format citations is etc. -- er, please no -- just some basic notions around "hey, if it takes the same amount of time or only a minute or two more, this style of doing things turns out to make a page easier on the eyes to read, while certain other styles of doing things may make it more likely that people won't read parts of a page you created, hint hint.")

[anotherslashfan]

I think one of the underlying ideas was to have new editors feel free to add content in a way they could manage, and have more experienced users help with layout/formatting. But maybe it's time to restructure the formatting help pages?