With an abundance of information and shrinking attention spans, capturing and retaining readers’ attention is a challenge in today’s world. Eye-tracking studies by the Neilson Norman Group show that readers scan text-based content in an F-Shaped Reading Pattern. This essentially means readers look for keywords or information in the first few lines and then in the first few words of every paragraph or title as they scroll through the page.

As technical writers and content developers, one of our goals is to help the reader find information quickly and easily. Understanding how readers look for content helps us present content in a way that improves content usability and readability. In this post, we will look at how to leverage the F-Shaped Reading Pattern to capture the readers’ attention.

There are many different reading patterns, and more emerge as technology and readers evolve. We will look at other reading patterns and their use in subsequent posts. We are focusing on the F-shaped reading pattern because it is perhaps the oldest one identified and is still relevant.

What is the F-Shaped Reading Pattern?

The F-shaped reading pattern, a term first coined by the NN Group, implies that users tend to seek relevant information:

• by reading in the first few lines of the content
• then reading a few more lines lower down in the content
• and finally scanning just the first few words down of lines along the left

The F-shaped reading pattern applies to LTR languages (or languages read from Left to Right) such as English. For TRL languages, the pattern is a flipped F-shaped pattern.

Improve Content Usability Using Writing Guidelines That Leverage the F-Shaped Reading Pattern

The F-Shaped Reading Pattern seems to indicate that the users scan the content for the information they need and then quickly move on when they do not find it. Keeping this in mind and the pattern of eye movement, we should help users find relevant information quickly and easily by:

• Delete Irrelevant Content
  Since the users are skimming content and moving on, it is best to delete any content that is not of relevance.
• Place the most relevant content first
  The first 2 paragraphs of content should give the user a very precise and specific summary of the details in the rest of the content.

The Inverted Pyramid Structure of writing used by journalists is particularly useful when writing descriptive articles or explanations.

• Create impactful title and headings.
  • Ensure your content has a title and headings tell the user precisely what they will read about in the content to follow.
  • Place the most important information or keywords most relevant to the user as much to the left as possible; ideally at the start of the title or heading.
  • Format the headings and subheadings such that they standout and catch the users’ eye.
• Use lists and tables effectively
  • Use bulleted and numbered lists to represent steps in a process or procedure or then highlight individual points.
  • Use tables to present comparative information or numeric data.
• Incorporate visual elements
  • Use relevant images, infographics, and icons to direct readers attention to important content, reinforce key messages, and/or break up text-heavy sections.
• Design formatting and layout to enhance usability
  • Consider different formatting options to highlight content. For example, use bold text to highlight user interface elements.
  • Use different layouts to draw attention to content. For example, create sidebars in documents to display titles, icons, notes/tips/warnings, lists of related articles and more.

Technical Documentation and the F-Shaped Reading Pattern

F-Shaped Reading Pattern is especially important to making technical content or technical documentation more effective. By nature, technical content is used as a reference and is read to achieving an end objective. For example, how-to instructions help complete tasks, case studies and white papers are used to highlight possibilities and so on.

As a result, oftentimes, users are looking for specific information, and they tend to scan content looking for relevant content. Implementing the guidelines listed above will help technical writers significantly improve the accessibility of content and user experience.