Wondering whether you ought to switch from Google to Bing? Well, here are reasons to switch to Bing. And here are reasons why Bing sucks.

Today be International Talk Like A Pirate Day. Arr!

“Courage is doing what you’re afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you’re scared.”
—Edward Vernon Rickenbacker

Over on Mashable, Josh Catone correctly notes that:

“Text is a very important part of user experience on the web, so it needs and deserves the same sort of design consideration. You must make your text usable in the same manner that you do the rest of your website or social media campaign materials.”

I do think the post doesn’t go far enough, though. I agree that “large blocks of text are your enemy,” but I think paragraphs of eight or nine lines in length are good candidates for being broken into two paragraphs … especially when the character count for the width of those paragraphs is in excess of 90. Many usability experts say 70-80 should be the maximum.

I’d add a sixth point to Josh’s excellent five: Utilize Punctuation. Long dashes, ellipses, parentheses and more — even boldface and italics (though font, of course, not punctuation) — these can all contribute to breaking up that gray box of text, making it that much easier for the reader to absorb.

Takeaway for marketers: Creating good copy is both a science and an art. It’s knowing the rules of the medium in which you’re working as much as it is understanding the business for which you’re writing.

BizReport reports on how biz is looking ahead to the coming year. What marketing tactics will be receiving dollars in 2010?

The top three: email, social media and keyword search.

The bottom three: mobile texting, national television and national newspapers.

Here’s the MediaPost story.