A small Minnesota startup, Walker Reading Technologies, has come up with what their neuroscience-based research says is the best way to format text online. They’re packaging the results as a product called Live Ink.
Their findings show that when reading block copy the brain struggles to focus on a particular line, picking up confusing cues from the lines above and below.
So Live Ink automatically breaks the text up into chunks that are easier to read, and arranges them to avoid the cues that confuse our poor struggling-to-concentrate brains.
Plus you can use it as a nice automatic haiku converter.
Be sure to check out their 51-page first chapter of Moby Dick.
Yes! LiveInk really works! I worked for a college textbook publishing company that used LiveInk on its online reading materials and students raved about how much easier it made reading comprehension. It’s truly a great new web technology.
Just remembering all the used textbooks I bought in college that were 90% covered in highlighter, I’ve got to think you’re right, Elizabeth.
But Live Ink’s Melville sample reminded me of Ted Turner colorizing black and white movies. The directors might not have had a choice, but the b&w constraint informed how the movies were made.
Although the Moby Dick chapter might have been an easier read this way, I couldn’t help thinking that it changed the cadence and even the emphasis of Melville’s prose.
It would be interesting to read a textbook passage specifically written with Live Ink in mind. I’d write it like the Wizard of Oz—start out in b&w and then blammo! Hello, new technology!