The newest L\u00f6\u00f6ppi & Skuuppi<\/i> magazine has an interview with researcher\u00a0Maria<\/i> Lassila-Merisalo<\/i>, where she gives strict advice to writers of online articles. Her instructions caused a tempest in Twitter\u2019s teacup, because they greatly differed from accepted views. The researcher considers links, as well as the option to comment, useless, because links will expire and comments require moderation. However, her most surprising opinion was her disdain for subheads: “Subheadings are not worth including, although they are still recommended by some sources. Surprisingly, according to surveys, people don’t even read them.” This advice runs contrary to, for example, Jakob Nielsen\u2019s usability studies<\/a>, and I have neither found for myself nor read in the interview any convincing evidence to support her claim. Further, Lassila-Merialo\u2019s guidelines are based on a specific online format: a long narrative article which is intended to be read from start to finish. However, most online texts are meant for information search and therefore benefit from subheadings which speed up skimming. Thus, in my teaching, I will continue to emphasize their crucial contribution to online usability, at least until better arguments appear.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The newest L\u00f6\u00f6ppi & Skuuppi magazine has an interview with researcher\u00a0Maria Lassila-Merisalo, where she gives strict advice to writers of online articles. Her instructions caused a tempest in Twitter\u2019s teacup, because they greatly differed from accepted views. The researcher considers links, as well as the option to comment, useless, because links will expire and comments […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11,14,12,15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-647","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-english","7":"category-english-en","8":"category-wordoftheweek","9":"category-wordoftheweek-en","10":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=647"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1294,"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647\/revisions\/1294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}