Paragraphs: Keep them short

For most general writing, try to keep your paragraphs short.

Look at the paragraphs in any daily newspaper, and you’re most likely to find that they’re quite short. For example, in today’s edition of The Forum, none of the paragraphs in this local, front-page story are more than one sentence.

If you look at the stories coming from the wire services, such as AP or Reuters, you’ll find the same pattern. Here’s an AP story that has mostly one- and two-sentence paragraphs, and with only a couple of three-sentence paragraphs.

Of course, there is room for variation here. Other publications use paragraphs longer than the one- or two-sentence wonders of newspapers and news services. Take a look at OpinionJournal.com (the online editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal) for an example. These are still not long paragraphs, however, averaging 3 or 4 sentences long (admittedly a rough estimate).

Why write short paragraphs?

William Zinsser puts it this way in On Writing Well:

Writing is visual—it catches the eye before it has a chance to catch the brain. Short paragraphs put air around what you write and make it look inviting, whereas a long chunk of type can discourage a reader from even starting to read.

This is especially true of “practical” writing—newspapers, business documents, instruction manuals: people tend to scan the page, rather than reading word-for-word. And short paragraphs make that scanning easier, breaking the text up visually.

Remember, though, that a paragraph is a unit of thought, and as such, “the subject does not admit to precise guidance,” says Sir Ernest Gowers (author of The Complete Plain Words). “Each paragraph must be homogeneous in subject matter, and sequential in treatment of it.” That may require a long paragraph, or a short one.

Thus, “Keep sentences short” is rather like the Pirate Code, as described by Captain Barbossa in Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl: “The code is more what you’d call “guidelines” than actual rules.”

Comments

[ft]

if use shortys it creates suspense im 1.2