If they want 2-inch
columns, text set at 8 points and the background a light gray, there??™s not a darn thing the
reader can do about it. This flexibility in design accommodates different content styles as
well; our example of carefully designed columns would handily fit denser type and longer,
multi-sentence paragraphs.
The Internet ignores all constants. Text size is dictated by the user, and long paragraphs of
text can quickly become unwieldy on a wide monitor, causing reading speed and information
retention to plummet. Because of this unpredictability, the best web content is written
like newspaper copy: short paragraphs that focus on one thought and rarely exceed
three sentences. This fast-paced style organizes thoughts into easily digestible chunks, and
helps the eye travel from block to block through the copious whitespace.
So how long is a paragraph on the Web? A 50-word paragraph is reasonable; shorter is
better. It has been demonstrated over and over again that readers scan web content
quickly, rarely lingering to read and fully digest the information. Short paragraphs oblige
this pattern.
Bullets
Like short paragraphs, bullets help readers lightly graze on content to help determine
whether they??™re in the right place.
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