I know we have a problem with crappy content on Steemit. I won't lament about that, I believe it's more of a general issue in our society, rather than particular to this platform or blockchain.
Since content creation has been democratized, everyone has the option to share opinions or whatever they feel appropriate. Despite this immense barrage and amalgam of value, information and distractions, I believe we will have better chances to find what we need, each with our own interests and quality expectations.
But I digress.
I started by mentioning crappy content, exactly because this post is not meant for those generating it.
To get to the topic of today's post, which has a practical component, let's go through some preliminary information.
Bite-sized Chunks of Information
We live in a world where people's attention is highly limited and not improving. That's why one of the concepts that prove right in practice, is that people want and absorb information much easier if it's presented in bite-sized chunks, meaning that they can "chew" it in "one bite". This concept probably originates in marketing, but it is true in most cases.
It is one of the reasons I rarely write lengthy posts, because how many will have the patience to read it from top to bottom?
BUT...
Long articles have their roles, and we need them to present context or various elements that make much more sense together.
If we write long articles, we should take advantage of the fact we know people rarely can digest large quantities of information at once.
Organizing Content. Lengthy Articles Seen As Mini-Books.
What do you think is easier to read and understand? An article written without any full breaks or other elements breaking the text or one which includes images, sections / subsections, lists, paragraphs, text dividers?
A lengthy article needs clear sections and maybe subsections. In 99% of the cases, sections should come first, only then the content for them. This is similar to the situation when someone writes a book: usually starts with the table of contents, not by writing the book and then trying to find some chapters and sub-chapters to fit the text in.
That's good organizing. And that splits the text into bite-sized chunks. A book you can read one chapter at a time (or less). You can also decide if you want to read it or not by checking out the table of contents. An article's point should be relatively clear if someone scans trough the sections and subsections.
Have you read (or attempted to read) books which often had paragraphs span over several pages? Was it a good experience reading such books? It wasn't for me. As a mini-book, a lengthy article has the same issue if it's written in big chunks, instead of easily digestible bite-sized chunks.
Text Dividers and Their Role
From the elements that can break up a text to make it easier to read, let's focus today on text dividers, also known as text separators. They are quite often used on Steemit, but not everyone knows where to get them from or how to use them. I haven't used them either although once or twice they would have done wonders for the readability of my posts.
The role of the text divider is, as the name suggests, to separate or divide a text in two parts. It is used when a new section / subsection is not appropriate at that point, but the text becomes too lengthy to be easily read and understood. They shouldn't be used, however, between two paragraphs that make sense as a whole, just because it "looks good" there. It is important not to break up the flow of thoughts in the middle by a divider.
It can also be useful to separate text from a group of images or text from video or text from advertising, etc.
If you don't know how a text divider looks like here's one below:
You can find them online if you search the web for free (or paid) images using the keywords "text divider" or "text separator".
However, the text dividers I found online were either too "heavy" for my taste or too small, if I remember correctly, and I've been too lazy to create my own simple text divider until now.
So, now I've decided to create a simple text divider for my own use here on Steemit. I'll also outline a few guidelines for anyone who would prefer to try out their own basic design skills.
Before we start creating our text divider...
...it is important to know a few details.
On Steemit (as well as Busy.org) the width of our paragraphs in pixels is 640. Which means that to show without being scaled down, a text divider needs to be at most 640 pixels wide.
That isn't necessarily true on other applications (especially for mobile), where the text divider, as all images, will either be stripped from the text or scaled down to fit the screen of the device.
What will we need?
An image editor with support for transparent backgrounds. I generally use GIMP, because I'm not a pro designer and it's free, but complex enough for my own needs.
Guidelines for creating your own simple text divider
- Check the paragraph's width of your preferred posting app. For Steemit and Busy, it's 640px.
- Create an image having at most the width above. Also, for the best formatting after you insert it into your post, consider drawing the text divider at the top of the image, and leaving 20px empty below.
- Steemit also has a "night mode", when the background of the post turns into a dark gray (among other changes). Make sure your divider is well visible in both day and night modes.
- Don't use white background, use a transparent color instead, otherwise it won't look good in Busy.org, which uses a very light shade of gray background, instead of white, for displaying the post. Not to mention using a white background would look awful in night mode on Steemit.
- Save as a PNG image, to preserve transparency information and the quality of the image, both important in this case.
- After you insert the text divider in your post, if your image width is less than the paragraph's width, enclose it between
<center>and</center>to center it horizontally. - Keep handy the snippet of code needed for inserting your text divider. You shouldn't upload it every time you use it!