Reading an article from the bottom up 0

Aug 20, 2010 by admin in Blog, Informative Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

“Always remember you’re unique, just like everyone else.”
- Alison Boulter -


A while ago, I admitted to my girlfriend that I often read articles from the bottom up. Apparently and to my surprise, that was a little weird. I’m pretty sure, though, that I’m not the only one who enjoys this reverse experience.

I do usually start at the beginning of an article. What happens is, that after a few paragraphs, I decide to skip everything in the middle and go straight to the last paragraph. From there, I read my way up again until I reach the paragraphs on top were I stopped reading earlier.

Avignon

Of course, I don’t always use this method. When the author has me hanging on his lips from the start or when the article is rather short, I do continue reading from the top down. It’s in all those other cases, where I’m on the fence whether the article is interesting enough to dedicate a part of my life to or so boring that I’d rather watch our mini sunflowers grow.

These are some of the reasons why I end up on that fence:

  • Too long introduction: sometimes a good article starts of with one of those dreaded long introduction paragraphs.
  • The never-ending lane: I start reading and even though it is rather interesting, it just doesn’t seem to ever come to an end. There are still so many pages left and it feels like it’s going to take forever to get through them.
  • Action-reaction obviousness: every action asks for a reaction, yet these reactions are rarely very surprising. Yet, when you read about the reaction first, it makes you a lot more curious about what the action could’ve been.
  • Pure text: people should learn to use enough white spaces, images or other things to give their articles some breathing space. Pure text, all cramped together, isn’t very inviting to read. Reading this from the bottom up makes it, for some reason, go down a lot easier.

So, in stead of wrestling myself through the article or giving up on it altogether, I just skip everything and start reading the last paragraph. If that one re-grasps my attention, then I just read the one on top of that one next and so on and so on …

Go ahead, give it a try yourself! It can’t (physically) hurt :)