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Interesting info - loads of it - is fine as long as it IS interesting to the mass membership.

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My main beef is paragraphing: II that is one long indigestible lump is just so difficult to follow.

There are several things that would alleviate this problem:
- authors ensuring that lengthy II sections are cut into "bite-sized chunks" (as mentioned previously in this thread);
- reformatting so that putting a double space between sentences is allowed;
- reformatting to ensure that paragraphing is preserved when quiz questions are used in daily/hourly games.

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Putting my designer hat on, I completely agree with paragrahps being a problem. The alarming trend I see is towards no line spacing between paras, and that drives me nuts!

I don't, however, think that double spaces after full-stops/periods are necessary or even desirable. They add nothing to comprehension, and would only make one more area for inconstistency to creep in as far as I am concerned.

The simplest way to make any slab of test more readable is to put it into a serif font. This is 'old-school' graphic design - Times {New} Roman and Garamond etc are used in printing most books for a reason; sans serif fonts are good for short pieces of info - headlines, titles etc - but in large chunks are just harder to read. I know I'm a font-nerd, but it just seems like basic common sense to me - if something is known to make reading/comprehension easier, why wouldn't you use it? There is a school of thought that what applies on the 'printed' page does not apply 'on-screen' - this, in my opinion and to put it mildly - is malarky.

As to II - I too tend to write a lot, and agree that it's better to have it there for those who want it, as those who don't simply won't read it. I must admit I do skip a lot of it myself when playing, but that's not the point! I also agree that in many instances the II 'completes' the question, especially in the more obscure areas, or in the more 'jokey' quizzes. 'Tis my belief that writing good II is as important a particular skill of the good FT Author as writing interesting questions (and I also don't like overly-long questions, but have trouble not writing them myself sometimes...), and coming up with alternative answers.

Oh yes, and there's nothing worse than patronising II (unless it's patronising questions, but we won't go there!) as has been mentioned above. Sure you expect dates for people, films, books, songs etc - which is 'common' knowledge in that anyone can Google it - but stuff that comes across as the writer assuming no-one could possibly know as much as they do about the subject, and therefore know nothing at all, just has me reaching for the 'poor' rating button.

Something I've noticed in the QQ, BTW, is that there is a lot of 'assumed' knowledge being, well, assumed! To me it's much more important in a deliberately designed 'stand-alone' question to expand abbreviations/acronyms, mention countries of origin (for people, TV shows, sports clubs, hobby groups, whatever) than it is in full-length quizzes which in most cases will have some sort of context to fall back on. The advent of the hourly/daily games meant that all Qs had to be ready to stand alone, but there are ways of doing that without having to have endless repetitions of the same info - visible titles and categories being the obvious one - which to me can ruin a good quiz. But when writing a specifically stand-alone question, everything that might be subject to confusion or mis-interpretation must be explained. That's why I find myself - feeling like quite a nong sometimes - writing corrections like "What's the BBC?" or "Where is Sydney?"

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The simplest way to make any slab of test more readable is to put it into a serif font. This is 'old-school' graphic design - Times {New} Roman and Garamond etc are used in printing most books for a reason; sans serif fonts are good for short pieces of info - headlines, titles etc - but in large chunks are just harder to read. I know I'm a font-nerd, but it just seems like basic common sense to me - if something is known to make reading/comprehension easier, why wouldn't you use it? There is a school of thought that what applies on the 'printed' page does not apply 'on-screen' - this, in my opinion and to put it mildly - is malarky.

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