Please let your readers read?

This is for anyone who runs a blog with white text on black background.

It is also for anyone who uses light grey text on a white or similarly non-contrast background.

You don’t mean to do this, but your choice is actively hostile to readers. Your choice is making your post hard to read, impossible to read, or annoying enough to the eye that sympathetic readers who might be inclined to really like your work will walk away.

Please take this seriously? Few readers will tell you directly what the problem is (notice comments below) like this post does. They think it’s “just them,” or that it’s “impolite” to say anything.

It’s to your benefit and pocketbook to take this seriously. I am not the only person who walks away from a blog because of this, but you won’t know that because no one will tell you.

These color choices can work for short pieces of text, for high-level categories, etc.

They can’t work for actual essays. It causes eyestrain.

I just walked away from two Substacks that, ordinarily, I would have subscribed to. Because of this horrible text.

I’ll never read them again.

Please: Stop it. Remember what your stock in trade is. It is words. Words that you wish people to read.

Stop breaking every long-held convention about readability just to satisfy the urge to “look modern.”