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We follow implicit rules to know when to speak and when to give way to others. We can apply this idea to writing and reading, too.
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We follow implicit rules to know when to speak and when to give way to others. We can apply this idea to writing and reading, too.
In Western culture, conversation proceeds by turns, roughly according to a ‘no gap, no overlap’ rule. We follow implicit rules to know when to speak and when to give way to others.
Applied to information design, we can view text chunks, headings and information panels as opportunities for control to pass between the writer and the reader.
So a continuous text such as a novel or longform newspaper article assumes the reader ‘listens’ to the writer.
An information document, on the other hand, with numerous headings, or a website with links, allows the reader to control the sequence.
In conversation, if you interrupt before it’s your turn, you risk misunderstanding the other person, who hasn’t had a chance to finish making their point. On the other hand, they need to stop before moving on the next point, to give you a chance to say something.
It’s similar in text.
Malcolm Coulthard concludes his book on spoken discourse by drawing exactly this parallel:
‘As you close this book you might like to speculate on the function of full stops. Are they perhaps interaction points, places where the writer thinks the reader needs to stop and ask questions about the previous sentence, questions whose range I initially restrict by the structuring of my argument and which I subsequently answer in the next or later sentences.’1
1. Malcolm Coulthard (1985) An introduction to discourse analysis, 2nd edition, London: Longman
Sacks H, Schegloff EA & Jefferson G (1974) ‘A simplest systematics for the organisation of turn-taking in conversations’, Language, 50, 696–735.
Waller, R (1987) The typographic contribution to language: towards a model of typographic genres and their underlying structures, PhD thesis, University of Reading, Chapter 8.