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Make your para­graphs interesting

Judy Vorfeld

Not only do we need to write clearly and tightly, we also need to make para­graphs inter­est­ing. When pos­si­ble, avoid all short sen­tences or all long sen­tences in a para­graph. Vary them. (I just did so in this paragraph).

It’s not nec­es­sary to do this with every para­graph, but such struc­ture helps the reader move along. And avoid huge para­graphs like the plague unless you are a famous, highly suc­cess­ful author. Like Patrick O’Brian.

In the busi­ness world, peo­ple often skip over long para­graphs. We have many options to make our doc­u­ments inter­est­ing to busy peo­ple: bul­lets, num­bers, indent­ing, bold­ing, and ital­i­ciz­ing, for exam­ple, along with head­ings and sub-headings that can be in con­trast­ing fonts and var­ied sizes.

Keep in mind that peo­ple scan when read­ing on the web, so def­i­nitely break up those para­graphs effi­ciently and cre­atively when you are cre­at­ing a web page or a blog article.

Try to have all your doc­u­ments become minor works of art. Let them con­vey the mes­sage effi­ciently, with­out wast­ing the reader’s time. Balance mes­sages on the page. Big assign­ment? No.

You can do it!

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