Jeffrey Veen: On Writing Short: "Yesterday at the conference table with a new client, we talked about their frustration with a classic problem. 'Users just won't read the instructions on our forms,' they complained. 'It really couldn't be simpler if they would just read the three sentences at the top!'

But of course we don't read instructions. It's a matter of context. When trying to get through an interaction, we're not in 'reading mode' ... we're in 'doing mode.' "