I must disagree with the point of "How We Read Online." Not every online reader has the attention span of an three year old, and the need for instant gratification. I believe a great deal of how you read online depends on the subject matter, how interested in it you are, and on how involved with it you are, and on the way you visualize the site where you've found what you are reading.

As an example, I post on a firearms forum regularly.The 'feel' of this forum is not like the quiet dustiness of an old, established library, nor the feeling that you're reading the paper between stops on a commuter train, nor yet that you're shouting at each other in a club full of flashing lights, overloud music and gyrating bodies. It's more like a country store, with a potbellied stove off to one side and a bunch of comfortable chairs around it, where you amble in, unload and prop your gun against the wall, take a cold drink out of the old Coca-Cola cooler with the sliding top, and settle in an empty chair with your pals to talk guns, politics, tell stories, and ask for opinions on how to fix a problem you're having with your gun, or just talk about life its ownself.

This forum attracts all sorts of people. We have our share of retired and active-duty military. We also have cops, serving and retired LEOs. We have people with postgraduate degrees and folks who never finished high school, and everything in between. There are half a dozen gunsmiths that are regulars I know of, and we have members whose mechanical skills hit the wall when it comes to field-stripping a gun enough to clean it. We have folks in their eighties and kids not yet out of their teens. Somewhere between ten and fifteen percent of the regulars are women. We have folks who are experts with various sorts of firearms, and some who never shot a gun in their lives until other members of the forum encouraged them to go and try it. All points of the political spectrum are represented; one of my friends on the forum describes himself as an "armed liberal," and he talks good sense (unlike the self-described "liberals" in politics).We have posters from as far away as England, Germany, Bolivia and Australia. Nobody cares who you are or what you do in the real world. As long as you treat the other posters with respect, you're welcome. If you don't, the site owner and the moderators will ban you from the site.

The forum is finely divided. We have sections for folks who like specific makes of firearms; specific models of military firearms; various types of firearms; folks who want to talk about survival techniques ranging from what to carry with you for a day trip into the woods, to how to cope if and when the S**t Hits The Fan/the global economy collapses/a natural disaster strikes/a civil war breaks out/Armageddon happens/mutant zombies from outer space attack, etc; hunting techniques;where to get the best deals on guns, ammo and accessories;a place to post your favorite recipes, and they don't have to be for game or fresh caught fish; a humor forum, which has jokes ranging from the abysmal to the hilarious; and a section called "The Powder Keg," where non-gun related topics get discussed and can get quite lively.

What does all this have to do with reading online? Just this. If someone has something to say, be it a long technical article like how to get the cosmoline out of a military surplus firearm that's been in storage for fifty-plus years, or a short blip on a problem they had with a particular gun at the range, those who are interested will read it from top to bottom. If they have questions, they'll post them. They get answers too, and not always from the write of the original/initial post. If they have comments, they'll post those too. The anomynity afforded by the Web allows people to speak their minds safely.

The fourm does have link capability, but the way we use it is to post a link that addressed a SPECIFIC item, such as a store that has a sale on a particular kind of ammunition, or to another site that has a reference article on the subject under discussion. The links are never casual, nor used casually.

I think that the point people read what they are interested in, be it online or from a book, was missed. I've posted enough on this gun forum to know how the members are reading what is there, and to what level of concentration they are reading it. And most of the time, that's with great attention and concentration on the subject matter. I can recall many college lectures where less attention was paid to the topic under discussion and the give and take of points raised in debate. Before you can get people to read what you write, online or in print, you first have to get their attention. Then you have to write clearly enough to keep it. If you write well and they are interested, you won't have a problem holding your audience. But if you can't write clearly, even those who are interested in what you have to say will find their attention wandering.