People skip long paragraphs Readers take measure of — and make decisions about — your copy based on how it looks. One of the most important visual cues is paragraph length. If your message looks too hard to read, people won't read it. So hit Return more often: It's one of the easiest ways to make your message more readable. How often should you hit … [Read more...] about Hit Return more often
Readability
A world of pain
Just 2% of adults globally perform at the top literacy level Read it and weep: After decades of reporting five levels of literacy, the largest adult literacy study in the world has dropped Level 5, the top level, for lack of participation. The reason: Just 2 percent of adults worldwide performed at Level 5, so researchers combined it with Level 4 in their most recent … [Read more...] about A world of pain
The release is dead
Long live the release Twitter has never issued a news release. Amazon introduced the Kindle through a series of tweets. Google announced Alphabet via a blog post from Larry Page. It's not just the tech companies: Canada — yep, the country — sent out its last traditional news release on Dec. 31, 2013. Now, it offers social media releases instead. Is the … [Read more...] about The release is dead
Attention to detail
Little things mean a lot New Journalism pioneer Tom Wolfe gave us "The Me Decade," "The Right Stuff," "Masters Of the Universe" and other enduring tag lines. He also revived the idea of cose piccolo — the "little things" — which Wolfe called status details, the symbols of a person's position in life. "The attention to status detail and dress is … [Read more...] about Attention to detail
Three ways to streamline sentences
Cut a word, increase comprehension Here's the problem with long sentences: Every time you add a word, you reduce comprehension. Let your sentences sprawl, and the subject, verb and object get too far away from each other. Your readers have to fly to JFK to pick up the subject, Uber to Chelsea to grab the verb and hightail it to the Upper East Side to find the object. … [Read more...] about Three ways to streamline sentences