If the content’s fun it’ll keep us interested

There are some helpful observations in Anna Richardson’s feature Screen Literate (DW 29 July), but I challenge her assertion that attention spans are much shorter among online audiences.

The excellent Poynter Eyetrack studies, which looked at how people read print and digital newspapers, suggest that while online readers may navigate quickly to the content that interests them, they often read for longer than offline readers when they’ve found what they’re looking for.

It’s a myth that we have all become Twitter-brained visual grazers with no appetite for prose.

I’m with comedian Jerry Seinfeld, who said, ’There is no such thing as an attention span. People have infinite attention if you are entertaining them.’

Tim Rich, Writer, 66000milesperhour.com, by e-mail