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Recently, I've taken some time to review and read a lot of web content
sites, blog sites, and article sites, and one thing I've noticed quite
frequently is that many people don't seem to know when to break a line
for a paragraph in their content. Paragraphs are important for several
reasons, and if you want your writing to be the very best, it is
important to know when to add a paragraph break and why. Web content
is a bit different than print items in that the reader will be viewing
the content on a screen and not on a page or in a book. Many people use
reading guides or their fingers or note cards to follow along while
they are reading a print item, but this is nearly impossible to do on
the computer without leaving unsightly fingerprints on your monitor.
That brings me to the first reason why paragraph breaks are important:
to make it easier for your readers to read your content without too
much eye strain.
Another reason for proper paragraph breaks is to
make the writing more attractive at first glance. A page with a long
scroll of writing with no breaks is not only NOT attractive, but it is
a bit intimidating to read too. Also, paragraph breaks are
important to break up when thoughts flow from one to another, allowing
the reader to know when a thought or mood or tone shift has occurred in
the writing. This helps break the elements of the writing up into
distinct sections with similar content, allowing the reader to more
easily focus on the key points of your writing. So how do you determine where to place a paragraph break? Good
question… Let me try to give you a good answer that pleases both web
copy writers and editors as well as hard core grammarians. A paragraph
is a group of sentences lumped together by similar meaning, intent or
content. When the thought changes or a new idea or concept is
introduced, a paragraph break allows for a pause to shift the reader's
mind to the new concept or idea. Next, for web copy especially,
paragraphs should be kept short. When writing for print, longer
paragraphs are more acceptable, but for web copy, 3-5 average length
sentences is usually a good paragraph and then a paragraph break is
needed. Paragraphs are also used to break up or accentuate
something if you are trying to make a point, add impact. For example,
if you have one sentence that makes a strong point and you really want
to make it stand out, you could make that sentence a paragraph all by
itself, with a break before and after, causing the reader to really
take notice of that sentence. For dialogue, there should be a
paragraph break before each new speaker. This means that sometimes very
short dialogue will be on a line all by itself. This is just proper
punctuation for dialogue so that it is easy to see who is saying what.
For quotes, short quotes can be included in the same paragraph as other
text, but longer quotes, of more than one or two lines, should be in a
paragraph by itself. (Please note that this information on quotes is
best for web copy. If you write papers or magazine articles and
newsprint, you should check out the AP style guide for newsprint, the
Chicago Manual of Style, MLA, or APA style guides for how to properly
cite quotations for other types of writing.) Paragraphs are our friends! When
writing your copy for the web, keep these things in mind and be sure to
use paragraphs properly. Doing so will make your writing easier to
read, more attractive, and help it make better sense to the reader.
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