Vincent Gable’s Blog

June 22, 2009

(Hyper)Text is King of Substance

Filed under: Accessibility,Design,Quotes,Usability | , , , , ,
― Vincent Gable on June 22, 2009

…I’d rather have the text of Clay’s speech than the video. For things that matter, written words are unambiguously better than speech. To start with, anything that matters isn’t just written, it’s usually rewritten repeatedly (and more important, condensed). Plus, it has hyperlinks. Plus, it’s smaller and cheaper to ship around. Plus, it’s searchable. Plus, it works on more devices. (I acknowledge that only the first of these is fundamental; but that alone would be enough).

Tim Bray

Videos, speech, etc. will always carry more emotional content. But for consuming ideas, text offers the highest bandwidth and most precision. Unfortunately, writing well takes time, and can hinder conversation.

Conceptually, I believe illustrative pictures and infographics are valid elements of modern text, like links, or typography.

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