reading
What Else Do we Know About the Human Factors on the Web?
Throughout my linguistic considerations on Web texts so far, I already pointed out that users of Web sites can have very different contexts when accessing the information that is given. As a consequence, we must expect that visitors may have many different levels of reader interest in our Web texts. “Every person has a certain level of interest in every piece of information. A writer should help each reader to get their desired level of information as quickly as possible.” (Wallace 1999)
2007-10-18 16:30 | 07. Human Factors , 08. Writing for the WebHow Users Read the Web
Certainly, there are many Web users who print out some information from the Web if they need it at a later date, for they do not want to rely on retrieving the information after leaving the Web site (see 
Nielsen 2000). “Sometimes, the remote server will be down, sometimes the webmaster has removed the page, and sometimes the users are simply not able to find the page a second time.” ( Nielsen 2000, p 94) Nonetheless, the main interest in Web sites is immediate access to online information; this is what the whole thing is all about.
The Role of Written Text for Online Communication
According to Kana et al. (2003), critics of our modern culture find fault with lacking ambitions of people in general to read and write. If this was the case, how then can texts on the Web be communicative at all? This article shall explain how written text fits into the frame of the Web, though. Comparing the quality and manner of communication via Web texts with communication via classical text media (e.g. books) will answer the question why we still deal with written text on the Web and succeed in doing so.
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- 08. Writing for the Web (7)