how to get your attention apparently the kind of instructions I would like to find for programming my alarm clock (a short list of points) is the kind of thing people seem willing to engage their attention with online. And the New York Times had an elegy for copy editors in their Op ed pages this week, since clearly no one will notice wickedly awkward grammar constructions anymore. Does that make you feel a bit drenched in the wrong kind of rain? Isn’t there a value in a longer piece that doesn’t try to give the hard hot sell but actually creates a place for you? What would happen to Gay Talese’s piece Frank Sinatra has a cold if we reduced it all to bullet points? But true it is the sort of reading that is preferable on paper rather than online. How we experience words and what we expect to be able to do with them are quite different when we hold a magazine or have seven different windows open in Firefox. But is the online medium confined to be just quick shots that have to have pizazz and link capabilities or can it be the touchstone that still holds our eyes? What does it mean when we choose to print out stories or share them, via email or Web sites with friends? In 2002 Patricia O’Conner and Stewart Kellerman had a piece in the New York Times called, “Virtual e-mail.” They said, “And the purpose of writing — whether with a pen, a typewriter or a laptop — is to connect with others. When people write well, they connect. When they write badly, they don’t. ” Tell me how it is please, that bullets connect us? If the medium is abrupt so too is our attention.]]>