Tempo, tempo, line and length
Latest posts | By Mark Brownlow | 13 Comments | Licence this content
This week was meant to be blog-free, as I’m offline, recharging creative batteries.
But as I cleared out my inbox and blog reader in preparation, an uncomfortable and obvious truth about content presentation struck home and seemed worth a quick riff.
We talk a lot about trust and targeting, personality and permission, reputation, repetition, recency and all sorts of things that play a role in driving a response.
We search for the words that draw people’s attention and pull them along the path that leads to a conversion.
We get all of that right, and yet we forget the conversion barriers that come not from what and when we send, but simply from how the words are arranged on the page.
Giving attention (reading) comes at a cost in time and effort. The greater the perceived effort required, the less chance the recipient will bother.
And the perceived cost begins before a word is read or an image viewed.
Consider this screenshot:
You don’t need to read the words. In fact, you wouldn’t read the words if that was an email. The wall of text is a barrier that few will bother scaling.
No matter how good the writing, how valuable the information, how trusted the source, response is sacrificed because the paragraph length demands more reading effort than some are prepared to commit.
Break up the paragraphs and a wall becomes a series of gentle hurdles.
Just as we break big projects into bite-sized chunks that are easier to tackle, so it is with paragraphs. (My rule of thumb is typically 1-4 lines per paragraph and never more than six).
All that makes common sense, but let’s get in some expert proof. An eye tracking study of article-level page design found…
“that stories with shorter paragraphs got more than twice as many overall eye fixations than those with longer paragraphs”
…and…
“the longer-paragraph format discourages reading and that short-paragraph format overwhelmingly encourages reading”
This paragraph length issue becomes more pressing as screen displays narrow, thanks to the spread of smartphones, netbooks and other mobile devices.
And it’s critical if you want people to read a lot of information. Big word counts can be a barrier in themselves, but less so if the individual text blocks are small.
The love of long paragraphs that blights many a good newsletter comes, I believe, from an essay-based education where we’re taught that a paragraph should be self-contained and cover a single concept, idea or focus. If addressing that focus requires a long paragraph, then so be it.
But we’re not in school anymore. We’re on Twitter.
Now let’s take it a step further…
If paragraphs and sentences share a consistent length, even a short one, the result becomes a monotone. If every paragraph is three lines long, you have a flat landscape which may be easy to cross, but promises no excitement or variation.
Throw in the occasional one-line paragraph or a three-word sentence and you may annoy your English professor. But you give the reading landscape contours and diversity. The content looks like a melody of words, not a dirge.
And we all love a good melody.
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13 comments on “Tempo, tempo, line and length”
Hi Mark,
Great post as always! I recall our discussion just before you left for vacation where you made that point to me about paragraphs and I took it to heart.
Humans like to see patterns, even when they aren’t really there and a written page is no exception. There’s got to be a visual flow to it.
Sometimes we get so hung up in how smart we are as writers that we forget to allow for such considerations as photos, graphics and flow.
Regards,
jim
Thanks Jim. Our discussion reminded me of the issue and then when I saw a vendor blog I love “hurting” its content with big text blocks, then 2 + 2 = blog post.
Of course, some might argue the post could say all it really says in about two lines. But that’s a debate for another time
Good post. I will definitely give this a try and see how it goes.
Thanks!
V.S.
Absolutely, blocks of text send readers packing. Like most things, variety is key…
This is all great advice and the sort of stuff we always recommend to clients.
It’s so common for people to have an instant TLDR (too long didn’t read) response to things on the internet. People have short attention spans, so you’ve got to keep things succinct.
Good work!
Thanks all.
I like TLDR Jake. Have to use it when I finally get round to the post about total article lengths…
Hi Mark,
Breaking the rules for email writing is great because it pushes writers into a more personal and personality based role.
Email goes into a contact’s personal space, but we still see emails written by a corporation. These companies may as well go all the way and get the legal department to provide the content!
Iain – yep, it’s a challenge. Have to be honest and say I keep having to remind myself to inject more “personal and personality” and not give in to the pull of corporate speak that is ever present.
great post it was very informative to me who wants to begin email marketing for my small business. thanks mate.
Right on target! When I first started writing for the digital world I hated to have to do what Mark suggests. It violated all the rules about writing that were drilled into me. That is until I got e-mail newsletters (in text format) that were nothing but long paragraph after long paragraph, leaving me sighing “where’s the end?” content all but forgotten. Yes, the digital landscape is visually different and our main goal should be to write with the reader’s eyeball comfort in mind!
Leona – when you’re trained to write offline essay-style (as I was), it’s a real leap of faith to switch.
Paragraphs with just one line in them!
Awful! But…it works!
Good post – and a nice demonstration of how things should be laid out. I’m always a little guilty of bulk paragraphing to be honest…
We all are Mike. It’s takes quite an effort to abandon offline writing style…took me years!