Pattern 44: Short texts
AKA:

You want people to be able to get a lot of information from your site and they want to do it quickly with minimal DOWNLOAD TIME (42). You also know that people scan text on web pages rather than read it carefully. You already therefore DESIGN PAGES FOR SCANNING (43). The web is essentially a hyperlinked, multi-dimensional experience rather than a linear one as with books, magazines or music. Long, linear texts are harder to read on screens.

The problem is to facilitate readability and maximize the rate of information transfer.

Therefore

Use only well written, short texts, one per page, one per workflow step. Provide extensive links between pages. In graphics, reduce everything that does not represent data to the barest minimum.

You may now wish to take any ANCHORS AWAY (45) and split your document into separate, linked pages. With SHORT TEXTS you can now STORE CONTENT IN A DATABASE (64).

Contributors and sources
Nielsen (2000).

Make the headline relevant to encourage users to read the text it captions. Try to keep the text short enough to fit in a low resolution browser above the fold. Consider rewriting any text to make it shorter. Then consider breaking it up into smaller chunks. A good heuristic for chunking is to ask if a sensible headline can be devised.

This pattern is related to Tidwell’s HIGH DENSITY INFORMATION DISPLAY and to Tufte’s (1983, 1990) concept of Chart Junk.

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