Its all too easy to just copy and paste a block of text in a page, save the file and call it a day. But let’s stop for a moment and think about the user experience. The text which you have written yourself (or had written), we assume you want your web visitors to read. But they won’t read it. They will actually avoid your text unless it is properly formatted (unless the text itself is of crucial importance to them and they will suffer through reading it despite the poor formatting).
What do we mean by poor formatting? Simply this: large blocks of text without appropriate paragraph line breaks and headings, and bullet points where necessary.
The Right Way
1) For the sake of making your text digestible your paragraphs shouldn’t exceed more than 100 words.
2) While you don’t have to put a heading above every paragraph it is suggested that you put one at least every two or three. Headings are more powerful than many writers realize. They allow you to communicate to the reader the core of the content in the coming paragraph, allowing the reader to instantly know what it is about.
3) Wherever you have a list of information (be it steps of a process, or just important points) it is highly recommended that you display it in bullet format.
4) Sometimes headings alone are not sufficient to create enough ‘space’ or break between sections of a page. In this case it is wise to use a horizontal line break with plenty space above and below it. This is very useful for web pages which have lists of customer testimonials and require line breaks to help separate out the content.
5) If your page has hyper links then make sure that the reader can see that they are in fact hyper links. You can do this by using CSS to create an obvious color difference between paragraph text and link text.
6) Use ‘Bold’ and “Italics’ to emphasis particular words and phrases in your text. This text instantly stands out and grabs your readers attention.
Note on Italics and Bold
The writer must avoid having text which is all in italics. Text that is completely in italics is hard to read and offers no real benefit. Additionally, having text which is all in bold is difficult to read and it also has the disadvantage of then not being able to be emphasized (as they are already bold).
Conclusion
It is understandable that after spending hours writing copy and straining your brain you’d want to end off as soon as possible and not bother with any ‘extras’ or ‘niceties’ like formatting. But pay heed dear copy writer! Your efforts will all be wasted unless you make your text visually digestible.
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