Super Chunk!

While perusing two of my kids' library books today, I found another example of how chunking works/doesn't work/perhaps doesn't matter.

My son, a third-grader, brought home two books that, on the surface, appear to be very similar. One is on earthworms, the other on snakes. Both are geared to introduce kids to these animals, to describe their variety, what they eat, how they work, what they do and where they (the kids, not the worms or snakes) can go for further information. But the ways the books were presented were peas and carrots. Both, however, are chunked.

In the earthworm book -- the heavily-chunked one -- starts with a table of contents, followed by a page called "fast facts," which talks in brief about the kinds, ranges, habitats, food, and young of worms, followed by a series of pages (appearance, homes, eating and enemies) each accompanied with a picture. Each topic gets one page, no more, and sometimes a bit less. Then there's a hands-on activity, words to know, and a list of places where my kid can read more. The text is informative, if a bit repetitive, and flows in simple, subject-verb sentences.

The other book on snakes is completely different. The writing is more complex, posing questions, using a more conversational tone and incomplete sentences. (We also "get to know" the writer thanks to a blurb at the back; the earthworm author gets no such treatment.) The chunking is present, but not as easily evident. One topic follows the other, but they're not set off by headers, nor limited to one page. The only graphical hint that the subject is changing slightly is the drop-cap that begins each section. At the end there is a section that mixes "words to know" with descriptions of various snakes. We also get an index, along with places to "find out more."

As I mentioned, one of these books clearly has chunking stamped throughout, while the chunking in the other is more subtle. If my son were required to write a report on either snakes or earthworms, however, based on these books, I'd urge him to use the earthworm book, since the heavier-handed chunking offers him more clear start and stop points for various items he might want to mention in his report. If, however, he were asked to offer a book report on one of these books, I'd urge the snake book, as the author uses language and photos more skillfully to incite curiosity and have the reader pose questions.

I guess what I'm getting at is this: I still believe some texts will lend themselves better to chunking than others. However, other elements of writing style also have to be taken into account in deciding how "heavy" the chunking may appear in the text. In general, these two books appear similar. But in the specific, they approach the subject matter differently. Might it be safe to assume that chunking in some documents is desirable, the the heaviness or lightness of the chunking might depend on the end goals of the text?

It's a squishy answer I'm not sure I like all that much, but it's easy to see how taking a light or heavy approach at chunking might make some pages more useful than others -- depending on how users want to use the pages. With chunking, we might be able to influence how users use what we present. But still comes the question of the week: How do we choose? There's got to be an answer somewhere, Sloth.

To Chunk or Not to Chunk

As the poor, poor readers of this blog know, I'm working on a masters degree in technical writing. The subject of the week: When do we know when a web text needs to be chunked or not. My initial thoughts:

I came up with a few instances when you might not want to chunk. Some are better than others:

Non-chunking:
1) The text naturally does not chunk.
2) The text is a narrative, essay, article or other block that readers will read/need to read to understand/enjoy to the fullest.

Chunking:
1) The text is used by audiences with vast differences in experience and knowledge, with some chunks directing the experienced user to different areas.
2) The text is used to explain how to do something, or describes something that is done in steps, or, in "real life" is done in steps. I'm thinking here of DIY instructions, or chunking text to guide a person through the process of buying something online.

These are pretty shaky at the moment. I'll keep thinking.

Here's another one that just struck me: Chunking works for texts we're used to seeing chunked. It would be pretty weird, for example, to read a Bible chapter not broken into verses.

Then, my thoughts start to break down. The question is much more complicated than I'd thought:

Just realized as I was sitting here, contemplating my bellybutton, that one of my favorite books on the shelf above my head is chunked and breaks one of the rules I set for non-chunking. So we can chuck the "narrative" rule out the window.

The book is "The Final Days," which focuses on the Nixon White House during the Watergate scandal. It is very nicely chunked, first with a "cast of characters," a lengthy list of people mentioned in the book. Very helpful, because the story is complicated.

Then the text itself is chunked, as the authors switch from one scene to the next, one viewpoint to the next, rather like cutting scenes in a movie. So I need to modify the narrative no-chunk rule:

If a narrative is complex, chunking is natural in separating events, identifying characters, settings and such.

How would this apply to the web -- well, if this book were presented as a web page, I'd definitely want it chunked, perhaps with cross-referenced links between the individual threads that the authors weave together. That might be one of those new web texts that Prof. Hailey mentioned -- a book where one can read one thread in its entirety, without interruption, but then get back into the linear flow of events.

So in dealing with multiple narrative threads, a cast of thousands, chunking would be beneficial.

And more exceptions:

I think whether chunking would or would not work in this situation depends on the purpose of the writing. I can see in some cases -- such as a report we'll have coming out next week at work detailing our performance during a management self-assessment on a new waste process -- where chunking is going to be valuable in helping us identify our strengths and weaknesses in a hurry. It's going to be a complex matter, needing a lot of background and analysis, and it will lead itself naturally to chunking because of that need for analysis.

It's a tough call. It's like whenever people ask me how to write something -- I don't have the vocabulary to tell them, aside from the boring grammar mechanics that makes their eyes glaze. Part of me thinks we can come up with a comprehensive philosophy on chunking versus non-chunking, part of me wonders if we'll be stuck with I'll know the chunking situation when I see it. But that's a cop out, because we have to have some kind of ground rule in order to see it. Argh.

So it's a tough question. Looking to the Internet for help is, of course, problematic, because you either run into the “chunk it or else camp” or the “chunk it because you're supposed to chunk it crowd” or the “chunking?” crowd. Must admit I was in the third category for a long time. Now I'm in that netherworld where I'm at the back of the temple where the idol of chunking is worshipped, wondering if there's some benefit here or if I should go back out the door. I can see the benefits, but I know it's not a blanket approach. Must keep thinking.

Chunk!

Chunking certainly has that alchemical appeal that technical communicators seek: A uniform format which “allows users not only to apply past experience with a site to future searched and explorations, but also to predict how an unfamiliar section of a web site will be organized,” according to the authors at webstyleguide.com.

But I wonder.

Have those who advocate chunking as the way to write on the web fallen victim to circular logic? Does chunking work because most people don’t want to read long texts on line; or is it because texts on the Internet are chunked that people don’t want to read long texts?

Webstyleguide concedes that chunking doesn’t work in all cases. “Although short Web document are usually preferable, it often makes little sense to divide a long document arbitrarily, particularly if you want users to be able to print easily or to save the entire document in one step,” the authors say. I’m glad for that concession, because rather than look at chunking as one of the Unbreakable Commandments of the Internet, I look at chunking as a writing style that works very well on the Internet, in those cases when material needs to be organized in a way to make it more useful to users. There is no reason, in my mind at least, to chunk documents we’re already used to seeing in the “long” form: articles, essays, short stories, novel chapters, et cetera.

The Center for Information Behaviour and the Evaluation of Research (CIBER) at University College London, in a study entitled “Information Behaviour of the Researcher of the Future,” published in January 2008, calls the preference for short web documents over long web documents a myth. What is not a myth, however, the researchers claim, is that on either short or long documents, most web searchers perform what the center calls power browsing – reading any text, short or long, for a page or two; a “shallow, horizontal, flicking behaviour.” They also surmise reading habits on the Web are not all that different from hard copy. “Reading appears to be only occasionally undertaken online, more often offline or not at all . . . We all do this,” they write, “and there is no reason to suppose that young people read more when they were required in the past to flick through hardcopy journal volumes.” So whether a document is expertly chunked or not, it’s the way people are using the web that has greater impact on what they get out of it, what they’d like to get out of it and what they might find missing than the way information is presented on the web.

So I have a lot of questions about chunking and reading habits.

Most people have no trouble picking up a book and reading quite long passages, chapters, and groups of chapters at a time, without taking breaks or complaining that the passages are too long to read. Is it because reading in such a way is the convention?

One of the strongest arguments I hear from proponents of chunking is that people don’t want to read long documents on the web due to eyestrain, and that for many readers, printing a long document out is their preference (though UCL/CIBER say that printing a document offers no evidence that it is used.) Why do our reading habits change significantly from one medium (book) to another (web), if they do change at all? Are we simply more culturally attuned to reading for pleasure – which implies slowed-down reading – in books, than we are for the web? What of younger generations – are they switching to online reading more, book-reading less? Does it matter?

When I read, what keeps me reading more than presentation is style – the writer’s voice. I look at authors like Terry Pratchett and Kurt Vonnegut, the former tends to write middle-of-the-road length chunks of text, while the latter tends to write much shorter chunks. Then I look at J.R.R. Tolkein, who writes very very long chapters, with only occasional chunking. I enjoy all three of them because they present writing style/voice that’s compelling and that keep me reading. The argument here is that most “reading” that takes place on the Internet is for information, not for pleasure. Then I counter: Ought we not work to make our text/document more engaging, so we don’t have to put up guideposts and flags and little bolded bits of text waving “slow down and read me” tags?

I admit that, on the web, I will skim some material, and find in some material that guideposts like headers, bullets and such are helpful as I search for information. But once I’ve found the information I want, I slow down and read, and I don’t really care how long things are. I don’t necessarily print, then read. I used to. And once I’ve found something I want to read, I’d rather scroll through it, rather than have to click on links to get to the next bit of reading, because that slows the process down. Even with our fast connections today, the amount of info that has to be downloaded with each page is pretty hefty. But it’s become a paperwork storage headache, so now I retain electronic documents, and read them on-screen. Similarly, I’ll do the same with printed material, skim and scan headers and other landmarks until I find what I need, then I slow down and read. The reading habits don’t seem to change from medium to medium.

I’m also curious about something else – does chunking contribute to the phenomenon of people using the Internet for information retrieval, and then relying on the Internet to be their memory, rather than relying on their brains? Conversely – do we have definite proof that reading from hard copy versus reading from the web makes us smarter/retain more information? Right now, it’s a matter of opinion or classification. We don’t remember everything we read, whether it be print or online. We remember what’s significant to us and what we re-read and re-read, no matter what form it’s in. Frank Smith in his book “Understanding Reading,” calls this concept our “theory of the world.” He insists – and from what I’ve seen, I believe he’s right – that we understand better when we read things on which we already have some background information stored in our heads. When we encounter new things, we have to read and re-read and read again, until what we read is internalized. I’ve seen this myself lately as I’ve tried to read The Federalist Papers. The copy I have features summaries of each of these letters in favor of the U.S. Constitution, in what you could call chunks. But I’m finding even these chunks a difficult read, because my background in these matters is thin. The chunking is helpful in a way, but until I’ve internalized at least a little comprehension of the arguments in these papers, the chunks can only serve as guideposts along a long and confusing road.

That brings me to something else: The CIBER study points out something quite interesting and, I think, pertinent to our discussion. Chunking is meant to make documents more useful to those who find them. But the CIBER study suggests the way we search might help – or hurt – us as we try to find things to read. “A persistent theme in the information literacy literature is that we need a fully developed mental map to make effective use of Internet search tools,” they write. “We need not only a broad understanding of how retrieval systems work and how information is represented within . . .databases, but also some appreciation of the nature of the information space, and of how spelling, grammar and sentence structure contribute to effective searches.” A lot of that power browsing behavior, they imply, comes from the fact that people in general have a lot harder time finding pertinent information on the web than they have reading it once they find it.