Designing Documents for Selective Reading

There are strong indications that many people increasingly resist reading medium-to-long documents. It is therefore important to contribute to the long-term viability of longer documents by providing better support for selective reading. Readers may be more willing to read longer documents knowing they have ample and near-seamless choices regarding which topics they can read and the level of detail at which they can read a particular topic. To design for selective reading requires an understanding of how readers deal with incomplete information and the concepts of prerequisite information and dependency relationships. Three broad approaches can be identified: building supported reading pathways, modularization, and summarization.