At 09:30 AM 9/18/2002 -0700, Ray Saintonge wrote:
Asking that the lead paragraph of an article reasonably and succinctly defines the subject matter may be as much as we can hope for.
I think this is the key. If we can give them the basics in the first paragraph then if it is something they are interested in they will stretch their reading skills (use dictionaries, etc.) to finish the rest of the article. For some people that first paragraph may be all they are interested in.
I know a lot people who probably fall in that 40% who have computers, and are on the Internet, but none of them would have any interest in visiting an encyclopedia. In fact, I would wager the very act of looking up a word in an encyclopedia would start to elevate their reading level to 5th grade or beyond. If we aim the encyclopedia to the 5th grade level then we will never help to elevate our readers.
-Jim