Write and wrong
September 3rd 2009 04:07
The aim of the first paragraph of any text, be it a blog post or a doctoral thesis, is to tempt the reader to venture forward to the second paragraph. Etcetera.
The Wikipedia entry for "vitreous humour" starts with an explanation of the difference between that spelling and this spelling: "vitreous humor".
Don't make the mistake, as I admit that I did, of spending some time, brow furrows deepening, trying to find a difference between the two mentions of "vitreous". It is in the spelling of "humour" that the difference occurs. The first spelling, the Wikipedia article informs us, is the British spelling while the second is the American spelling.
There are two reasons why this is a poor first paragraph: in the context of the entry, the information is not important, and it is not interesting.
Most people who read see American and British spelling regularly and think little of it. Readers who have found their way to this web page with the aim of finding information on the vitreous humour do not expect to find, instead, a banal fact of life.
The internet represents, amongst other things, a publishing revolution. One of the consequences is a change in reading habits. Where once we sat down in a comfortable chair with a single book or magazine, we now have before us millions of web pages to choose from, each one just a mouse click away. If you want to keep readers who do find their way to your blog or web page, give them something interesting about the subject they came looking for.
The vitreous humour, by the way, is a part of the eye. It is the major part in terms of mass, a colourless, transparent substance which fills the space between the lens at the front and the optic nerve at the back.
If that had been the first paragraph of the Wikipedia article, I might have been tempted to read the second paragraph.
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Thank you, and yes, it's a fascinating diagram isn't it. The eye is so much bigger and so much more complicated than generally understood.