Have you noticed how my posts always start with a short one-sentence paragraph?

(Like that one.) 

That’s because a short, snappy sentence surrounded by lots of white space is much more effective at capturing attention and conveying a potent serving of information at a glance. 

Which means it’s more effective at sparking curiosity and compelling people to read! 

But if ALL of your paragraphs are short, their impact will diminish. 

When you have a bunch of similarly sized sentences in a row, they all start to look the same – and that makes the words so much harder to read. Your eye gets lost in the sameness and has to put more effort into focusing on where it is and where it’s supposed to go next. 

Same goes if all of your paragraphs were two-line sentences or three-line sentences. The monotony of repetition makes it harder for people to read your words and understand your meaning at a glance. 

And that’s a problem – because when your copy isn’t easy to read, people don’t read it. 

That’s why it’s important to use a “choppy” paragraph structure for your copy.

(For example: start with a one-line paragraph, then a really short half-line paragraph, a two-line paragraph, a couple of one-line paragraphs, then a three-line paragraph, and so on…) 

This goes for ALL of your copy: your landing pages, website copy, emails, social media posts and more.

By varying the size of your paragraphs – and the amount of white space around your words – you make it easy for the eye to track its way through your words and immediately understand your meaning. 

And that will make it so much easier for you to keep people READING.

*Photo by CHUTTERSNAP on Unsplash