My dad keeps bringing me newspaper articles about stuff that he thinks i'll like. It's really good that he cares enough to cutout the pieces from multiple pages and paste them together for me. But sometimes it's hard to show my appreciation when I get them. It took me a little while to work out why. I'm pretty sure it's because written communication has changed dramatically over the last twenty years and we don't read the same way we used to.

When I was a kid, we used to get the newspaper. On the front page there was always a half page story which finished on page three or four. Alongside the main story was usually a couple of other stories at most, a nice title and an advert. It was a riveting read but required dedicated time to sit and concentrate on.

I'm not a kid anymore and many things have changed. I agree with many who say that "life is busier now" but also alongside that, we now have access to far more information than ever before. So much so that we dont have time to read or absorb even a small portion of it. As a result, publishing has changed to accomodate this. 

Nowadays, publishing offers a lot more content in far smaller portions so that the variety of information is vast. The more that is presented means that users get a far greater opportunity to be able to focus on what they want or need.  Websites are designed to meet this need and increasingly other mediums are following this trend.