The ideas are interesting, but I’m finding the use of italics and especially bold font somewhat distracting—I feel like I’m being harangued. (Not as bad as all caps, but still.)
Strongly concur. I have the same reaction to pjeby’s blog. I don’t think it’s only because of the bold; it’s the writing style too, which consistently seems to me to be saying “I understand all this stuff, and you are stupid. So stupid I have to write in short sentences. And sentence fragments. Because otherwise … you won’t get it.” And I find it offputting. Very offputting.
I do find It somewhat distracting to ‘hear’ words with the emphasis forced onto us through formatting.
I usually appreciate the use of bold and italics as a way of highlighting key concepts. It helps me navigate to the most interesting parts and give a framework to the document layout. Randomly bolding random words distracts from this.
I agree that there’s too much bolding going on; but let me just add (having just returned from a bout of wiki-reading prompted by your links) that this is a superb post; I’ll be thinking and reading about much of this and looking forward to the promised future posts.
The ideas are interesting, but I’m finding the use of italics and especially bold font somewhat distracting—I feel like I’m being harangued. (Not as bad as all caps, but still.)
Strongly concur. I have the same reaction to pjeby’s blog. I don’t think it’s only because of the bold; it’s the writing style too, which consistently seems to me to be saying “I understand all this stuff, and you are stupid. So stupid I have to write in short sentences. And sentence fragments. Because otherwise … you won’t get it.” And I find it offputting. Very offputting.
Which is a pity, because …
… pjeby has some interesting things to say.
I agree that bolded text is a bit too much, particularly given the typography used here on LW. I think emphasis is fine, though.
I do find It somewhat distracting to ‘hear’ words with the emphasis forced onto us through formatting.
I usually appreciate the use of bold and italics as a way of highlighting key concepts. It helps me navigate to the most interesting parts and give a framework to the document layout. Randomly bolding random words distracts from this.
I agree that there’s too much bolding going on; but let me just add (having just returned from a bout of wiki-reading prompted by your links) that this is a superb post; I’ll be thinking and reading about much of this and looking forward to the promised future posts.