Questions to focus on: Learning from the Press

These questions can be used at different levels. You can take 30 seconds to think about one or two. You can discuss them in a team or group of like-minded Christians. Or they can be used in a college class, including assignments and research projects, and answered in writing at any depth. They may be freely reproduced for this purpose. Please email us additional questions that could be added to this page.
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  1. Look at magazines and newspapers. Do they always use a 'drop capital' at the start of an article (or a bold/caps leadin)? Why is this feature useful?
  2. Why should paragraphs on a webpage be shorter than in a newspaper or magazine?
  3. Why do newspapers indent paragraphs rather than using a line-space? Why is this unnecessary on the Web?
  4. How do bullet points help the reader's eye?
  5. What is your reaction when forced to read long blocks of text which are 'reversed out' - i.e. pale text on a dark background?
  6. Discuss the use of sans-serif versus serif fonts. How many professionally-designed sites use serif?
  7. Find a web-page where text runs from edge to edge of the monitor with narrow page margins. Count the number of characters per line. Then compare the readability of this page with another where there are wide margins. Why is readability so much improved?