[Lorento]

It wasn't till after I graduated that I started to realize the enormous volume of books arts majors had to read. And I don't understand why their information is presented in such an inconvenient format.

If the book is making an argument with a lot of discrete points and interconnections. Why isn't it a diagram or some kind of interactive hyperlinking thing? Why don't the individual points at least have a box around them so you can separate them visually from the other stuff without having to actually read it all?

Arts text books and essays just don't make sense to me. I can understand text format if it gives the reader motivation to understand that a soul-less diagram might not, but it sounds like most of this writing doesn't do that either. So I guess my question is, is this information really too complex to structure in an obvious way, or are the authors too lazy to design such a structure, or is it simply an ingrained culture that nobody can break free of?

[coverup]

Reading is a skill, like anything else. If you're good at it, there's nothing inconvenient about the format at all.

Consider that a command-line interface is an extremely inconvenient way for most people to use a computer but perfectly natural for others.

[amelius]

Perhaps this [1] is a format you would find convenient.

[1] http://www.wikisummaries.org/Pride_and_Prejudice