The Art of Writing Short: How to Cut Your Sentences Correctly
The decades of investigations have proved that reading on a computer screen is much harder than on a standard printed page like we all are used to. First of all, this is tiring for our eyes, so white space (the empty part between the paragraphs) is necessary for readers to take in the information and understand it properly.
In the era of high technologies, reading on mobile devices has taken off so you should be ready that the most part of your audience will see your text on a five- or six-inch screens. This means you should take care of making it easy for them to enjoy their reading and it brings us to the art of creating short clear sentences.
Splitting up for Good
The general rule that can be applied to any text is splitting all paragraphs that are longer than three lines. However, do not go too far with this. Some blogs use very short paragraphs like one sentence and this is a good example of how you should not do just because it is too much. The text would look choppy and the reader will lose the connection of ideas.
In some cases, the long paragraphs cannot be split for the sake of meaning preservation. It may happen if there is a list of bullets (you actually can divide one into paragraphs but it will look weird) or you need to use one paragraph for an example (this does not make sense to divide the text into smaller parts).
Writing Short
Let’s forget for a moment about a well-known grammar rule we know from school: each sentence should contain a subject and a verb. In blogging, if you miss one of these points, your sentences get shorter but reading becomes even smoother which works fine for a blog post. If you are not sure about a particular sentence fragment, try to read it aloud instead: if it sounds okay for you, then leave it that way.
A little tip: if English is not your native language, you may be struggling to come up with a good word order because everything sounds strange to you. In this case, you may not use it at all and just simplify the structure of more complicated sentences.
Customize, Experiment and Enjoy
The best thing in your blog is that it is YOUR blog and you can do everything you want as long as it works for your readers. If you want to write in a hard-hitting style with sharp sentences, you got it. If you want to try something thoughtful with detailed descriptions – this is totally fine. You choose your style and you choose your audience, just remember that you can break your paragraphs more often than you do in a book. Make a draft, change what you need and edit so many times until you feel you made a perfect text!
