Matthew Gates http://notetoservices.com 9m 2,262 #articles
The views of this article are the perspective of the author and may not be reflective of Confessions of the Professions.
The Artificial World of Article Reading
When it comes to reading articles, we all have our favorite websites that we turn to, for research, for entertainment, for updating ourselves with the world, and for general knowledge about something, hopefully Confessions of the Professions is one of yours. These websites may contain one author or multiple authors, paid or unpaid, featuring guest articles, or official articles written by the employees of the website.
It is impossible to read articles from the millions of websites that are publishing dozens to hundreds of articles a day, but after choosing our favorites and getting updates in our news feeds and emails, we get the gist of what happened that day, at least, for the stuff we find relevant to our own lives.
There are articles that are worth reading, that make you think, “Wow, I’m glad I spent that 10 minutes reading that article” while there are plenty more articles that make you wish you could the last 10 minutes of your life back. Some articles are too opinionated, others are based in assumption, while plenty more certainly have the facts and references to back the points made in the article. Sometimes articles may be out of date and no longer relevant, yet they still manage to show up in the listing of a search engine. Other articles may state one thing in the headline, but talk about something completely different.
No matter what we are reading, there are plenty of articles that keep you reading, while others make you stop dead and close out the page, regardless of whether you got to through the first paragraph, or the middle of the page.
These are just some of my pet peeves of reading articles:
Articles That Do Not Follow a Basic Organized Structure
There are some short articles and some long articles. Most articles start out with an introduction, a body containing some key points that may or may not be backed up with research, followed by a conclusion that ties the whole article together. There are some articles out there that were written half-assed, may come off as rants that were not supposed to be rants, or just do not make sense. An article should always follow the basic structure that the mind understands.
In almost every language, a story starts out with a beginning, a middle, and an end. The story builds up to the characters or provides the observer with plenty of information to understand what is going on, to sympathize or relate to the story-line. The characters in the story usually face some type of problems they must overcome. These problems may be extremely challenging, but once the “aha” moment comes, they tend to be alright, work their way through the situation, and then the story-line starts to lead to a resolution of the conflict, and finally, in the end, there may be some more build up for another story, or the story comes to an end.
Books, novels, articles, poems, and short stories all follow a similar structure. An article has no excuse not to follow the structure.
Articles That Never Come To Any Point
There is nothing more fascinating than article with a great headline. The first paragraph also makes you want to keep reading. Paragraph by paragraph, the author makes sense, does a wonderful job in keeping structure and clarity in the words and sentences. As the reader progresses through the article, the article contains some valid and great points. Unfortunately, the conclusion tends to fall off, not tying in anything together, and losing the entire focus. It is almost like reading a long book or watching a movie. The point of the conclusion is ensuring the observer does not walk away unsatisfied, but that everything is tied in together to give complete clarity and satisfaction. “I just wasted…” or “I want my XX minutes back” are certainly phrases that come to mind, and any article should never want their readers to feel this way.
Articles That Do Not Contain a Summary
This is just my own personal opinion because I am a skimmer and a lazy reader unless I am really interested in an article and choose to read the entire 5 or 10 minutes it might take me. I see very few websites that include a summary in or of their articles. There are just three websites I know that do this, and I hope many more begin to follow suit:
- Confessions of the Professions: Quick Glimpse which is located on the left side of nearly every confession, contains 4 or 5 bullet points for each article, includes a summary of what is being read, and contains most of the main points of the article, so the reader may continue reading, or choose to look over and take a Quick Glimpse of the article.
- CNN: A popular news website that offers Story Highlights, in the form of 3 or 4 bullet points for each of their news articles, this makes getting the main points of getting the main gist of the news articles easier to understand.
- Authority Nutrition: Taking a different approach, this evidence-based health website, which offers a lot of research-based information, provides a small bubble sentence or two at the end of each section of its articles, known as Bottom Line to give the reader a summary of what was just covered in the section they just read.
I am not saying that people shouldn’t read a full article, as a full article can give them all the information and data they may need, but to give a brief summary of what is being read and what the expectations of the article is, or provide the main gist of the article, can pick up those extra readers who are lazy reader, skimmers, or people who do not have a lot of time to read. Most websites should adopt the practice of providing article summaries to their readers. The reader may spend less time on an article, but more time finding other articles to read.
Articles With Pagination
Unless the article has several sections, contains tons of research, and is longer than 3 to 4 pages when pasted into Microsoft Word, OpenOffice, or LibreOffice, there is absolutely no reason for someone to have to click Page 2, Page 3, to continue reading an article. They are reading the article, isn’t that enough that their attention is on the article? Websites now have to throw into the mix pagination, forcing people to click on the next page to continue reading.
Are those ads really bringing in so much revenue that the pagination exists solely to get more impressions on each page? Impression ads are nice, but find another way to make money. Don’t annoy readers with forced page clicks to get to the rest of the article. If there is no option to view an article as a Single page, than I am already lost and my attention is gone, probably just like everyone else.
Articles That Just Should Have Never Existed
There are plenty of words, just like there are books, that probably should not exist, but the ideas came about, and they got turned into words, sentences, and paragraphs, typed up, and published on a page. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of good ideas and bad ideas out there, but these ideas probably should have just been let go, never to be heard from again. These articles are just articles that probably should not exist, but somehow, they do. They might get circulated on Facebook or Twitter, and every few years, someone finds the article again and mass shares it as if it is the first time they reading it, thinking it might be the best article ever, but really, it’s not. Just let the article drop off the face of the Internet, like it should have done years ago.
Articles That Act As If The Economy is Amazing
These articles usually contain advice about saving money, making money, or investing money, often assuming that you are making good money, have a great job with promotions and raises. They may also assume that banks actually pay more than the lousy pathetic 0.1% interest which you would need about few million dollars in your bank account to generate anything worth talking about. Otherwise, if you have an average of $1,000 or $2,000 in your bank account at any given time, and you would have to always have this in your account to generate anything, you might end up with $10 or $20 at the end of the year.
Smoothly paving your way to retirement with those kind of interest rates! Yup, banks are not the best place to keep your money, no matter what your mother or father told you. I’m not saying that banks are not trustworthy, which they probably aren’t, considering the fact that they borrow your money to lend to other people and charge them high interest rates, yet would never consider even giving you a bank account that generates half of that interest. Might have better luck with a 401k, stock market, investor account, or a mutual fund.
Anyways, there are better places to keep your money that could generate slightly more interest than giving it to any of the banks that all went bankrupt and yet, who pleaded for the government to bail them out with taxpayer money, yet never did a thing for the taxpayer. That brings me to my point: Trust a bank like you would your dog to watch over a nice juicy piece of steak, except the steak is your money. Yeah, you will always have access to your money, they won’t take it from you, but they won’t pay you anything, either. In fact, most banks nowadays charge you to hold your money, and won’t hesitate to charge you money for not having money.
Obviously, the sooner you start saving, the better off you will be. No article should have ever needed to tell you that. If you think you are going to rely on social security or welfare, well, you might get lucky, but you might not be so lucky, so you want to think about your future and stop spending as if you won’t be alive tomorrow.
I am no economist and I am not saying we live in a horrible economy where money is worth nothing, and no one can get jobs, but what am I saying is that articles tend to have write as if there is a perfect fantasy economy in mind when delivering information about the economy and savings, assuming that everyone makes so much money. They must actually be writing for the few who have no nightmares or anxiety about retirement.
These articles do not take into account inflation, greed, congress, cost of living, increase in product pricing, economic failure, etc. How could they? They make assumptions, but in a few years, the majority of the articles that think we have a great economy will be obsolete. If you have come across an article that has helped you on a path to become a millionaire or a thousandaire, or a hundredaire, please feel free to share that article in the comments, because while there are plenty of informative resources out there, the people who are trying to save money while raising a family, with bills to pay, rent due, and making no where what they are supposed to be making, according to those salary estimate websites, would gladly like to know what you did to “get ahead” in life.
Articles That Contain Annoying Popup Ads
If you have never come across an ad that popped up on an article, you have probably got one favorite website and that is the only website you visit. The majority, however, have at least that one popup, where there are several things that happen:
- The ad pops up before you even get to the page
- The ad pops up after you get to the page
- The ad pops up after you start scrolling
- The ad pops up as you get to the middle
- The ad pops up as you get to the end
One of these may happen or all of them at the same time. It is understandable that every blogger wants to obtain visitors and make a living off of blogging. Unfortunately, just a few figure out the tricks of the trade, either becoming personal consultants, writing personal articles, or figuring out the entire ad system for their website, and making it work for them, in order to generate enough to not have to go anywhere or do anything for work, other than to come up with new articles.
There are plenty of entrepreneurs who have figured it out. They have spent hours and years trying to appeal to an audience, what products to sell, what words to write, etc., and they are able to write articles, blog, or consult for a living, and they may even generate quite a bit of revenue from ads.
For the rest, many think that ads are appealing, and they can be if they are the right ads, but ads must be utilized on a website in the proper way, not too forceful, but not too laid back, either. There are plenty of ways to make money that are not in the form of ads. Most articles put on the Internet are free. It is finding a way to make money while keeping things free, and Google leads by example on that one.
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