The "Under 10 Rule" for Bold |
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Bold tends to be a tool that is misused. People either don't use it at all, or they use it too much.
Whenever people see a block of text, they tend not to read every single word unless it is a novel. Instead, they skim over looking for key information. In the absence of any additional formatting, they look for interesting words and phrases, to try and understand the key message. The English Language (and many others) are constructed in a way that the more frequent words that we use are shorter (of, and, I, we, the) whereas the words we use less often tend to be longer (reservation, procrastinate, interoperability). This means that we already tend to focus on longer words, because they are more likely to contain meaning. Text in bold (and other formatting techniques) forces them to stop skimming, due to the change in text. However, if you bold too much, it loses its differentiating ability. The Under 10 Rule for bolding makes sure you don’t use bold too much. The two parts of the rule are:
So, if you’ve got an article of 500 words, no more than 50 words should be in bold – and no more than 10 words in a row, such a sentence. |
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Title: The "Under 10 Rule" for Bold |
