Does anyone else hate reading long blocks of italicized type on screen?

March 30, 2004 9:48 AM

does anyone else hate reading long blocks of italicized type on screen??? it's nasty.
posted by specialk420 to etiquette/policy at 9:48 AM (38 comments total)

Actually, yeah. I'm also bugged by posts which consist entirely of quotes from the article. The point of the post is to summarize the link. If we find your summary intriguing, we'll follow the link to the article.
posted by DrJohnEvans at 9:56 AM on March 30, 2004

I'm not so hot on italics either... for some reason they're harder for me to read so I tend to skip past any large chunks of italicized text, which I'm sure was not the intent of the writer.
posted by adrianhon at 10:11 AM on March 30, 2004

At least they're full size this time. I continue to see it as y2karl trying to meet us halfway. Keep trending, baby!
posted by soyjoy at 10:19 AM on March 30, 2004

i like y2karls posts.. but the italics and length cut down the number of posts i read thoroughly ... just an fyi.
posted by specialk420 at 10:30 AM on March 30, 2004

y2karl to enter thread and pitch a fit in 3...2... 1....
posted by eyeballkid at 10:39 AM on March 30, 2004

Indented Blockquotes are probably a better option.
Or maybe small text?
posted by Blue Stone at 10:54 AM on March 30, 2004

I tend to skip large blocks of text in italics, or small text. I see y2karl spends a lot of time on his posts, but cannot see the advantage of quoting large parts of the link on the frontpage or in alt-texts. If I am interested in the link I will click on it and read it myself.
I think it is better to have a good summary and let the reader decide if they are interested or not.
posted by sebas at 11:17 AM on March 30, 2004

Blockquotes are bad too, the added horizontal and vertical whitespace breaks up the nice "one paragraph, one post" thing the frontpage has/should have going for it.

How about switching font? Or how about not quoting the damn article and taking a deep breath and wondering if all this newsfilter is really necessary?
posted by fvw at 11:19 AM on March 30, 2004

Its his trademark.

Those who dislike y2karl's rantings can ignore the post quite easily. Those who enjoy his cleverly worded thought provoking essays are sure to never miss one.

Can't we let the man be?
posted by justgary at 11:19 AM on March 30, 2004

No we can't just let the man be! This is MetaDome!
posted by tr33hggr at 11:23 AM on March 30, 2004

i like y2's posts alot - the presentation of his excellent posts sometimes pose a readibility issue though, for this mefi member ... which is certainly the pot calling the kettle black
posted by specialk420 at 11:27 AM on March 30, 2004

What if we like his rants/cleverly worded thought provoking essays but would prefer it if they were presented in a more pleasing and readable format? Is it bad to offer constructive criticism?
posted by adrianhon at 11:29 AM on March 30, 2004

Once or twice would be constructive criticism. By this point, it's just nagging.
posted by timeistight at 11:33 AM on March 30, 2004

Is it bad to offer constructive criticism?

Yes ;) I mean, its been brought up before, and he didn't ask for it.

Regardless, I just think its kind of neat that we have 1 million members but y2karl's post are so immediately identifiable.

I only read his "blues" essays, however, so I'm probably not the best person to comment on his unique posting style.
posted by justgary at 11:37 AM on March 30, 2004

the entire thread on chalabi was italicized... i hate to think what older eyes than mine would think about trying to read that thread on screen.

at the end of the day, in my humble opinion, excessive use of italics should be avoided on the web/screen if possible.
posted by specialk420 at 11:41 AM on March 30, 2004

Yeah, we should all talk about Karl's formatting again, because we haven't done that before at least half a dozen times (once only a week ago, no less). In addition, I think we should somehow fuse this discussion into a discussion of whether we do politics well.

the entire thread on chalabi was italicized... i hate to think what older eyes than mine would think about trying to read that thread on screen.

You apparently haven't noticed the other 98.5% of Karl's posts. You may have a point, but it's been discussed so thoroughly and without resolve as to make the point inconsequential. Even if Karl is willing to meet half way, as has been suggested (and as he has done, I would say), we can clearly not talk about it every week at least. Maybe once a month when everyone bashes Miguel we could just kill two birds with one stone.
posted by The God Complex at 11:57 AM on March 30, 2004

How about switching font? Or how about not quoting the damn article and taking a deep breath and wondering if all this newsfilter is really necessary?

My apologies all around: if I'd known this other dead horse was already being trounced right in this very thread I wouldn't have made my sarcastic suggestion that we commence doing so.
posted by The God Complex at 11:59 AM on March 30, 2004

Let's kill karl. He isn't toeing the line.

MetaWhinge.
posted by five fresh fish at 12:02 PM on March 30, 2004

italics don't bother me so much. but since day one, my font settings on the customize page have been thus:

Body Text: Tahoma
Body Text Size: 9 point
Smaller Text: Tahoma
Smaller Text Size: 8 point

this makes a wonderfully readable page with much more content on it and avoids totally that default "monkeyfilter" look. and when one wishes to make a small aside, a single <small> pair produce perzackly the correct, readable size. recently some addled folk have taken to nesting these tags, resulting in miniscule, blurred, run-together shite which is completely unreadable. and thus goes completely unread, at least by moi. i suspect the criminally oriented high-user-number faction.

*glares *
posted by quonsar at 12:21 PM on March 30, 2004

All posts and comments are also easily read in Garamond, except ones from those need not be named members for whom Ruritania is recommended...
--oh, and for clavdivs...
posted by y2karl at 1:10 PM on March 30, 2004

Once or twice would be constructive criticism. By this point, it's just nagging.
No, we have gone way past nagging, way past beating a dead horse and are well into the realm of grinding a horse skeleton into a fine paste with a mortar and pestle. For fuck's sake, give it up already!

disclaimer: I dislike reading long blocks of italic text, but is it really that big a deal?
*glares back at quonsar, pokes tongue out*
posted by dg at 2:25 PM on March 30, 2004

Let's also mention excessive text in TITLE tags that don't render correctly across browsers so that you have these huge blocks of blue blotting out parts of the front page sometimes.

The fucking fantods with those posts.
posted by xmutex at 2:47 PM on March 30, 2004

i didn't realize this horse had been flogged to hell already ... apologies to touching a sore spot for some.
posted by specialk420 at 2:50 PM on March 30, 2004

dg: No, we have gone way past nagging, way past beating a dead horse and are well into the realm of grinding a horse skeleton into a fine paste with a mortar and pestle. For fuck's sake, give it up already!

No way! Now that we're there, let's just go all the way and make Jello.
posted by zpousman at 3:02 PM on March 30, 2004

What's wrong with quotation marks?
posted by smackfu at 3:34 PM on March 30, 2004

Well, yes. But maybe I'll try Garamond...
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 7:05 PM on March 30, 2004

I'm with smackfu - I've always wanted to say this!

Normal text, preceded by a helpful colon (i.e. it's no good if you've got irritable bowel syndrome) and good old quotation marks will do the job every time. It's clearer if, wanting to quote sebas, for instance, you add a space, like so:

"I tend to skip large blocks of text in italics, or small text. I see y2karl spends a lot of time on his posts, but cannot see the advantage of quoting large parts of the link on the frontpage or in alt-texts. If I am interested in the link I will click on it and read it myself. I think it is better to have a good summary and let the reader decide if they are interested or not."

Italics are better used for quoting fellow members whose comments you're addressing, imo.
posted by MiguelCardoso at 7:25 PM on March 30, 2004

i suspect the criminally oriented high-user-number faction.

No no no, that was me you're thinking of. I have a nice, middle-of-the-bell-curve user number. And comfortable shoes.

okay, dammit, I won't nest the damn small tags anymore, dammit.
posted by ook at 8:49 PM on March 30, 2004

mn
posted by ook at 8:51 PM on March 30, 2004

Us law school types are supposed to offset and indent any quote longer than 50 words. I think a similar rule exists in academic research. It looks better, anyway.
posted by PrinceValium at 9:01 PM on March 30, 2004

Indeed, while I am in general a great fan and staunch defender of y2karl's posts, I think the italics are a bad esthetic choice. Personally, I would either summarize, or just use double quotes like my Language Arts teacher told me to do.
posted by Hildago at 10:46 PM on March 30, 2004

I think most academic research uses MLA style, which stipulates that you have to offset and indent for five (I forget the exact number) or more lines of a quote.
posted by jmd82 at 11:20 PM on March 30, 2004

I think it would be interesting to compare screenshots of those who don't like large blocks of italics and those that do. I could imagine that under certain visual displays and font renderers italics could look a little hard to read. Personally, I'm fine with them, even though for some reason italics also come out as bold.
posted by salmacis at 11:41 PM on March 30, 2004

Don't you think that S&M, necrophilia and beastiality is just Flogging a dead horse.
posted by johnnyboy at 4:35 AM on March 31, 2004

i suspect the criminally oriented high-user-number faction

Oh yeah?
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 6:23 AM on March 31, 2004

Well while we're, er, offering constructive criticism...

A designer writes;
Formatting problems that cause me to want to skip text (i.e. I miss your finely honed copy) are when members don't use a capital letter at the start of a sentence, miss out too much punctuation (e.g. dont instead of don't), put a space before the punctuation mark at the end of a sentence & don't split long posts into paragraphs.

taz provides a good example here in this AskMe thread (I'm still trying to work out if she was joking or not ;-)

When we read we don't actually break down words, we tend to recognize words by their shape. Using, for example, dont instead of don't will slow down a reader as the shape of dont isn't stored away in the average brain as don't and could be confused with the shape of, say, dent.

Leaving out capitals causes a similar problem as the reader is usually expecting a capital to signify a slight break (the full point or other end mark will help but it's a lot easier to see full point-space-capital than just full point-space.

With paragraph breaks, you are helping the reader's eye follow from line to line without getting lost (as well as the written meaning of a change in paragraph). Long chunks of text are harder to read.

This AskMe thread started by Shane covers the space-before-end mark situation.

It may take a little longer to check & format properly but bear in mind that a lot of people here read whilst doing something else or are skim-reading so a post/comment that is hard to read could be missed.

In saying all this I do realize that I am probably committing formatting/grammar/writing sins in other's eyes. Then again, I've been paid enough money over the years to make people's writings readable so you should all do as I say, no matter how badly written, godammit! (joke ;-)

On spell check: Heh. Managed to write grammer for grammar.
posted by i_cola at 5:19 PM on March 31, 2004

(joke ;-)

Unclosed parenthesis. You may now immolate from dejection. Thank you. Have a nice day. :o)
posted by shepd at 12:57 AM on April 1, 2004

I say let people code up some clean css way to delimit quotations, like a vertical line beside them, or in a box, who knows; let matt decide which one he likes, and link that to the <q> tag. That way it can be clean, readable, and everyone will know what it the accepted way to make quotes.
posted by rhyax at 11:12 AM on April 1, 2004