We all know when it comes to food, that the first bite is with the eye. If something is presented in a delicious and delectable way, we’re naturally more inclined to want to eat it. Alternatively, if it’s some greasy, grey looking slop, or a hard brick of alleged “food” – we won’t be quite as tempted.
Written text isn’t much different. It helps to present your text in a few specific ways in order to get people mentally salivating enough to read it.
The main consideration is digestibility. We’ve all been there: excited to read an article, only to be presented with a dense, monolithic block of text. It stops you in your tracks a bit. If you were only in the mood for a light read, or even a skim through for a few details, then you naturally feel resistance towards enduring the weighty task of drudging through the text.
Well written text, especially online, shouldn’t feel like that. It should look light and refreshing, like a delicate mousse or souffle. So how do we achieve that?
Let’s start with some essential advice and move down into some pointers that can be used more contextually.
How Do I Improve the Readability of My Writing?
Keep Sentences Short
Let’s start with sentence structure. Aim to keep sentences brief and impactful. Trying to fit too many clauses or statements into one sentence makes the sentence long and unwieldy, and it can affect its understandability. Northern Illinois University has a great resource about avoiding these “run-on” sentences.
In order to check your text for long, trailing sentences, the free Hemingway Editor has long been a friend to writers everywhere – the link for this is in the description too. It’s named for novelist and journalist Ernest Hemingway who was famed for his short and to the point writing style. The tool highlights where sentences could be shorter, simpler, and more straightforward – improving readability.
Keep Paragraphs Short Too
Keeping paragraphs short is essential in avoiding those dense, monolithic blocks of text I mentioned earlier.
In design, the blank sections in between paragraphs and content is called whitespace – and whitespace truly is your friend. It makes your writing appear lighter, more snackable, and less daunting. HubSpot says that more whitespace helps readers “focus on the content, not the clutter,” which is so true.
Personally, when writing blog content for the web and using a word processor, I don’t like paragraphs to go over 4 lines. I prefer even shorter paragraphs when writing persuasive sales copy. But those are just my rules of thumb.
Use Subheadings and Sub-Subheadings
This is another crucial way to make your reading more digestible and simple for readers to understand – especially those who are just skim-reading, or looking for specific information.
Break each of the concepts you are discussing into separate sections with their own subheadings, and even apply subheadings under those if you need to. This helps both human readers and search engines understand where each bit of information lives on a page as well as the hierarchy of the whole written piece.
Well organised subheadings are essential for winning over skim readers; for keeping your text light, orderly and digestible; and helping readers identify the bits that are most relevant to them.
Use Lists Wherever Possible
Well-formatted lists are incredibly versatile, and a great asset in your writerly arsenal. Bullet pointed or ordered lists are an easily skimmable, highly visual way of conveying a set of information.
Say you’re answering a question that has a number of different possible responses. Instead of simply rattling through them all in a single, dense paragraph, putting them in a bulleted list lets you individually acknowledge each in a visually engaging way.
Ordered lists are especially useful if you are presenting a how-to article with instructions. Look at it this way – which recipe would be easier for you to follow, one where each step is segmented into its own list item, or one where every step is just one sentence after another? Chances are it’s the former.
Even within an article that is otherwise quite paragraph-heavy, a bulleted or ordered list can be a bit of digestible fresh air amidst the heaviness!
Don’t Shy Away From Tables
Sometimes, especially when discussing data-heavy topics, the simplest way to portray the information can be by using a table.
With the web becoming increasingly more visual, the temptation here might be to format that table in an embedded image. This might provide a more visually pleasing result, but it does mean that search engines may be completely blind to the information hidden within. It also means that readers can’t search within the page the information that they might be looking for.
Use Callout Boxes
What do you do when you want to break up a long swathe of text, but you don’t have data that would suit a list or a table? Simple – break out insightful nuggets of information into a callout box.
What is a callout box?
Callout boxes are small, differently emphasised boxes of content that you can use to draw the eye to crucial concepts.
HubSpot uses these to great effect, especially when they are defining a key term or answering a highly relevant question. Not only do these examples draw the eye to a crucial bit of information, but they add simple visual interest. (Screenshot shown in video from here.)
Include a Table of Contents
If you’re writing a blog post that contains a number of subheadings but is coming up a bit long, it might be worth providing a table of contents near the top of the article. When using these, I like to place them after the article’s introduction.
Tables of contents can be really useful online, as you can make them clickable. HTML anchor links let you turn each entry in your table of contents into a hyperlink that, when clicked, pings down the page to the place where that content lives.
Again, HubSpot uses these to great effect, for example in their blog post about social media calendar tools – shown above/to the right next to the purple bracket (my addition for clarity).
And by the way, if a blog post is getting too big with lots of different concepts and subheadings, consider splitting your article into 2 or more parts. Don’t just lazily do a “part 1, part 2, part 3” though – think about the different concepts you’re covering and how they can be approached separately.
Include Images
This one’s a bit of a no-brainer. If it makes sense to break up your text with the occasional photo, infographic or illustration, absolutely do so!
Don’t Overdo Visual Elements
Now we’ve explored all of our options. Short sentences, short paragraphs, and well-structured headings are non-negotiable. But I’m afraid it’s caveat time.
When it comes to visual elements like bulleted lists, tables, callouts, and so on, don’t overdo it. You need to strike a careful balance between the visual elements that you use, otherwise the page gets far too busy and your message is lost – just like it would be when hidden in an impenetrable wall of text.
It’s strange how writing and design overlap – even in something as text-heavy as blogging. Be aware of this as you use these tools to make your text more digestible.
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