English: Over the past few decades information design has been in transition—moving from the creation of mainly paper-based communications to today’s mix of paper and electronic artifacts. Information designers’ repertoire must now include visual and verbal strategies for the Web. This shift in media compels us to ask what reading looks like in an electronic environment and to reconsider how people might engage with our content. To design effective electronic communications requires not only good writing and visual design but also an understanding of reading on the Web. Early research about reading online was limited to how the technology itself influenced what people do, in particular, with how the size of computer screens and the poor legibility of typography constrained reading. While the influence of technology on reading is important—even crucial—especially as we move from designing for large computer screens to the small screens of mobile phones, technology is not the most important consideration in thinking about effective online information design. Excellence in online information design involves anticipating how people may engage with Web content—cognitively, emotionally, and culturally. Excellence also calls on us to be responsive to people’s expanding purposes for reading online—purposes such as retrieving information, learning new subject matter, making decisions, sharing information, or having fun. By understanding reading online, information designers can make writing and visual design choices that are more rhetorically appropriate. This presentation will sketch our evolving conceptions of reading on the Web. It examines the empirical literature about reading online with a focus on how reading has changed between 1980 and 2010. To support this analysis, I profile some typical purposes for reading online and suggest what these purposes imply for designing content and for supporting the human relationships that we intend to enable. I also point to re...