Things I should have thought of earlier...

I was just thinking about Gregory's article and Neilsen's ugly webpages, and wondering why what has been appropriate for print is not appropriate for the web, and I think it's about audience. I don't think anyone has ever enjoyed reading long, wordy paragraphs with no section breaks or headers, but I think that print traditionally has had a smaller audience that has endured these painful things because they thought they had no choice. Enter the web, and a much wider audience, many of whom may read very little in the way of books or articles that are not for entertainment purposes (however difficult that may be to imagine, there are more people out there like this than there are of us). These people do not have the tolerance for wordiness and find the ordinarily accepted style of nonfiction writing soporific--it results in the MEGO effect (My Eyes Glaze Over). In writing you must accomodate the lowest common denominator (and I don't mean that in a derogatory way), so we must now take into account not just the understanding of our college-educated audience who reads crap because that's what they're used to, but to the masses who want their information written well, with concision and clarity.
It's interesting that it is for writing to a broader audience that we must hone our writing skills more than to our usual select audience. As most of us have learned, it is usually easier to write a longer paper than to say the same thing in just 1 or 2 pages.

Just a late thought I thought I'd put out there.