I recently did a training webinar where someone asked,
“How much white space should be in my copy?”
i.e…
When should you hit ‘enter’ and start a new line?
Are long paragraphs EVER appropriate?
My thoughts:
There are 2 things you should *avoid* here: (1) avoid just writing in huge, chunky paragraphs… and also (2) avoid having copy where you start a new line after every sentence… and where every sentence is roughly the same length.
(1) should just be common sense. Big paragraphs are tiring. They’re scary to look at. They can scare people off. But they can serve a helpful purpose (which I’ll explain in a sec).
(2) is a little less intuitive. Why avoid starting a new line after every sentence? …because when you do this, your copy starts to look like a big, long, double-spaced paragraph. And I’ve always found this copy harder to read. So instead of doing that…
I like doing this.
Having short runs.
Of short sentences.
Breaking them all up with a new line.
Because…
This is easy to read.
And once you’ve read a couple of these…
You build momentum in your reading, and you start to think to yourself, “alright, I’ve already started this thing… so I might as well finish it. And yes, I’m now reading a much longer paragraph… but since I had momentum going into it, it feels easier. And so here I go.” And you can keep on adding stuff to these paragraphs. And pack a lot of good material & good selling… or a good story… into these ‘biggies.’ And then…
…return to small sentences.
Short.
Punchy.
Build some more momentum.
Now what I’ve been doing over the past couple lines has been a bit exaggerated – often times my “short, punchy” sentences are longer than 2-4 words. And often times my longer paragraphs are shorter than 80 words.
But you get the point.
Don’t scare people off by only writing in huge paragraphs.
But also don’t tire people out by making your copy look like it’s just a single, whoppin’ double-spaced paragraph.
