The Biggest Reason People Aren't Reading What You Write

What's the reason? The answer is two words: paragraph length.

Written Dec 14, 2007, read 507 times since then.

The answer is two words: paragraph length.

You want to use short paragraphs in your emails.

Really short.

You also want to use short paragraphs on your blogs. And on your website. And in your articles. And in your book. And in your email replies to interested people.

I'm not kidding. Because when you write really, really long paragraphs by email and they go on and on without stopping about every last thing you want to say, then it becomes this block of text that's hard to read and follow. Your readers become frightened to start the paragraph, and, if they do actually start the paragraph, they get lost in the middle and never reach the end. And if they never reach the end, then they never see the next paragraph and basically the gig is up, because they've missed the point of what you were writing about, and you may as well never have written in the first place. And, because you lose them as readers you never hear back from them, you've gotten no response and so you can start to feel frustrated. Then angry. Then sad. Then you begin to fill with despair and wonder if anyone cares about you at all, and whether you should even be in business, or even in the world. Maybe you should just give it all up and go get a job in a cafe. When, it's really not that bad, it's just because your paragraphs were too long. Make sense? Short paragraphs. No more than three or four lines.

'Nuff said.

Learn more about the author, Mark Silver.

Comment on this article

Posted by Jonathan Martin, Seattle, Washington | Dec 15, 2007

Nice demonstration!
Posted by Cindy Engquist, Annandale, Virginia | Dec 17, 2007

Cleverly written! And true!

Marketing Made Affordable
Posted by Jeevan Ananadasakaran, Seattle, Washington | Jan 02, 2008

Perfect, I just learned something I'll use from now on.
Posted by Gabriella Sannino, San Francisco, California | Aug 12, 2008

What I want to know is how were you able to write copy on here that was less than 500 words? Every time I try to post short articles I am told "not enough content" humm interesting copy though. :)
Posted by Emma McCreary, Portland, Oregon | Aug 20, 2008

I had that same question, how did you get this published as an article?

But regardless, I'm glad you did. Super helpful.
Posted by Mark Silver, Portland, Oregon | Aug 20, 2008

Good question. I dunno. I just did.

Can working on your business nourish your heart?
Posted by Marianna Paulson, Surrey, British Columbia Canada | 3 weeks ago

Perhaps everyone is asking the wrong person.

Perhaps just because.

Perhaps this was so valuable it passed the censors.

At any rate, excellent suggestion, Mark, and so true in this world of sound-bites.