Summary

The article discusses the issue of excessive highlighting on Medium stories and suggests a solution for readers who find it distracting or difficult to read.

Abstract

The author addresses the recent debate on Medium regarding the overuse of text highlighting, which some readers find visually challenging and detrimental to the reading experience. The article explains that highlighted text can be harder to read due to reduced contrast, especially for visually impaired individuals. After attempting to reduce highlights manually, the author learned from Medium support that readers can avoid seeing excessive highlights by unfollowing users who highlight excessively. The author also expresses a preference for moderate use of highlights to maintain the feature's significance and to ensure accessibility for all readers.

Opinions

The author sympathizes with those who feel overwhelmed or attacked by the criticism of compulsive highlighting.
Highlighting the entire text or a large portion of it is seen as counterproductive, as it diminishes the purpose of highlighting the most important parts of a story.
The author values accessibility and wants their stories to be enjoyable and readable for everyone, including those with visual impairments.
While the author appreciates reader engagement through highlights, they advocate for a more selective and moderate approach to highlighting.
The author has attempted to communicate with a top highlighter, David, to encourage more selective highlighting but acknowledges the challenge of changing reader habits.
The author is open to feedback on whether their stance on highlighting is considered harsh or a fair point, indicating a willingness to adapt their view based on reader responses.

Find Highlighted Text Annoying? There’s a Solution!

For anyone who’s not so keen on those highlights

Screengrab by author — it shows my view of this story

There’s been a big debate on Medium recently, about whether too much highlighting spoils our stories for some readers. It began with a rather rude piece about compulsive highlighters, which frankly, wasn’t very nice.

My reaction was sympathy towards anyone who felt attacked by this. I felt defensive for them. However, as the stories in response to these articles piled up, I also started to see why perhaps using highlights more sparingly makes perfect sense.

Ease of reading

Some people find highlighted text harder to read. They’re right, of course. It is harder to read. The red colouring, in particular, reduces the contrast between the text and the background colour, so the words don’t stand out so well on the page.

I can imagine this might be particular a problem for people who are visually impaired. But I can also sympathise with those who simply don’t like it, or find it distracting, and would prefer highlighting was used more sparingly, just for the ‘highlights’ e.g. the best bits.

When the whole story is highlighted, the purpose of highlights is lost. And it’s not much better at 50% or 75%. Perhaps I’m a fool, but I’m of the view that it’s probably intended to be more selective than that.

I should perhaps add that I do like some highlights! It’s nice to see people engaging with our stories. I just think moderation is a good thing.

Accessibility

In light of the fact that some people find it harder to read highlighted stories, I was concerned that my stories were not as accessible to everyone as I’d like them to be. So after a few attempts to remove excessive highlighting by tweaking my stories, I reached out to the help desk.

“Hi, Is there any way to control the amount of highlighting on a story? I notice that some stories have ‘top highlights’ only.”

‘Top highlights’ are much less intrusive than having the whole thing covered in a red hue.

Medium’s response was revealing. There is a solution — for readers at least!

Unfollow and the highlights disappear!

If you’re not a fan of highlighting, or you find it makes text difficult to read, then unfollow anyone who’s doing excessive highlighting, and you won’t see it!

Yes. It’s that simple.

In the words of Medium support…

When a user makes highlights on a story, those highlights are only visible to the author of the story and those users who follow the highlighting user. This means that the highlights will not be visible to the vast majority of your readers.

And on the topic of ‘top highlights’?

Top highlights depend on your network (the people you follow). If many people you follow highlight a passage, it will be highlighted as “Top highlight.” You won’t see it on your own stories, but other users might depending on their network.

So if highlighting is ruining your reading experience, unfollow any serial offenders, and magic! The highlighting disappears! Your reading experience is restored.

The awkward bit

This brings me to the second point…

I’d prefer my readers only highlighted one or two ‘highlights’. Because highlighting the whole darn thing is pointless and might present problems to other readers.

I did request this in a couple of quiet messages to my top highlighter, David, but it didn’t work. I guess you can’t read everything if you’re tied up reading all the stories on here! 😉

I love it that people are enthusiastic for my stories, but want everyone to feel they can enjoy them. So let’s go easy on those highlights, can we? Thank you for reading.

I’m open to feedback. Is this harsh or a fair point? I can edit.

I Wrote One Story and Made $1000!

Then I did it again. Here’s how…

medium.com