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Comment by gleenn | Hacker News Reader

I am firmly a believer very few people read anything. They don't read long things as much as they don't even read short ones. One of the things I always thought was funny was having Product Managers see there were problems with UI, then I would get tickets to add text near the problems. It always crackme up because if users didn't even barely read the button they were clicking they why would they read a paragraph nearby.

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In school they were really big on the 5-paragraph persuasive essay format. I guess because it teaches you to think through an argument and present it to someone.

In practice, I find that if I don't format something as a bulleted/numbered list, nobody is going to look at it.

I'm sympathetic. It's like if code isn't color-coded and properly indented, I'm just not reading it.

> In practice, I find that if I don't format something as a bulleted/numbered list, nobody is going to look at it.

I’m one of those people, if I’m honest. If I’m reading for work, I want the minimum words necessary to get the point across. I’m looking for information, not a story.

If I’m reading for enjoyment though, it’s another thing entirely.

Now we're in the era of:

Alice: Hey ChatGPT, please take this bullet list of points and turn it into a polite, but assertive and persuasive, email to Bob.

Bob: Hey, ChatGPT, please take Alice's email and turn it into a succinct list of bullet points.

I was always surprised when my customers read past the first item in a list.

The funny thing was that in school they taught us not to read the standardized tests but to scan and skim them. Which would fit well into a satire of standardized testing.

I don’t have the link but somewhere in last 3 years I read article found on HN.

It was about the fact that lots of people actually struggle reading.

Bad parts are that they don’t even know or they won’t admit it. Then they make people who are fluent at reading angry because those people will expect reading a paragraph is not noticeable effort and will think everyone is fluent at reading.

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