11 · Seeing
F-Shaped Pattern
On a page of plain text, people read the first lines, then a shorter line further down, then scan down the left edge. Together that makes a rough F.
Evidence: Holds, with limitsWhat we do with it
- 01
Put the words that matter at the start of headings, paragraphs and links. The left edge gets read; the right side often doesn't.
- 02
Break text up with clear headings. On well-built pages people jump from heading to heading instead.
- 03
Treat an F in your heatmaps as a warning that the page gives the eye nothing to follow.
Examples
Getting it wrong, getting it right.
Don't
A long help article in unbroken paragraphs. People read the first two lines and leave.
Do
The same article with a heading every few paragraphs, and the answer in the first sentence under each.
The evidence
What the research says.
First described in 2006 by the Nielsen Norman Group, a usability research firm, from its own eye-tracking of 232 people. Peer-reviewed eye-tracking agrees the pattern isn't fixed. Georg Buscher, Edward Cutrell and Meredith Ringel Morris tracked 20 people across 361 web pages in 2009 and found where attention landed depended on the task. Michael Cole and colleagues found in 2011 that how people read a page changed with the task they were doing and the kind of page in front of them. Our read: the F shows up when text gives the eye nothing else to follow, like headings, lists or bold words.
How our view changed
We read an F as a sign of a page with no structure. We don't design layouts around it.
Sources
- Nielsen, J. (2006). F-shaped pattern for reading web content. Alertbox column, April 2006 (the original eye-tracking study).
- Buscher, G., Cutrell, E., & Morris, M. R. (2009). What do you see when you're surfing? Using eye tracking to predict salient regions of web pages. CHI '09.
- Cole, M. J., Gwizdka, J., Liu, C., Bierig, R., Belkin, N. J., & Zhang, X. (2011). Task and user effects on reading patterns in information search. Interacting with Computers, 23(4).
Last reviewed November 7, 2026. How we keep this current