What writers & others say
“Beware: The infinite space on the Internet creates aerated prose.”
— Roy Peter Clark, The Poynter Institute’s senior scholar and author of Writing Tools
“High-quality short copy will outperform poorly written long copy every time.”
— Michel Fortin, chief experience office, Supportibles, Inc.
“Think index cards, not toilet paper.”
— Jeff Herrington, president, Jeff Herrington Communications
“Sometimes, users do read down an entire page. It does happen. Rarely.”
— Jakob Nielsen, usability expert
“User attention eventually peters out. The further down the page users go, the less time they generally spend on each additional information unit.”
— Jakob Nielsen, usability expert
“It’s as if users arrive at a page with a certain amount of fuel in their tanks.”
— Jakob Nielsen, usability expert
“As they ‘drive’ down the page, they use up gas, and sooner or later they run dry. The amount of gas in the tank will vary, depending on each user’s inherent motivation and interest in each page’s specific topic. Also, the ‘gasoline’ might evaporate or be topped up if content down the page is less or more relevant than the user expected.”
— Jakob Nielsen, usability expert
“Scrolling still reduces usability. But all design involves trade-offs, and the argument against scrolling is no longer as strong as it used to be. Thus, pages that can be markedly improved with a scrolling design may be made as long as necessary, though it should be a rare exception to go beyond three [screensful] on an average monitor.”
— Jakob Nielsen, usability expert
“Each little piece of useless chatter is relatively innocent, and only robs us of a few seconds. The cumulative effect, however, is much worse: we assume that most communication is equally useless and tune it out, thus missing important information that’s sometimes embedded in the mess.”
— Jakob Nielsen, “the king of usability”
“Let’s clean up our information environment. Are you saying something that benefits your customers, or simply spewing word count? If users don’t need it, don’t write it. Stop polluting now.”
— Jakob Nielsen, “the king of usability”
“You’d be wise to put your word count on a strict diet.”
— Jakob Nielsen, “the king of usability”
“The dirtiest four-letter word in the English language: ‘read.’”
— Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics website
How long should your message be?
Would your message be twice as good if it were half as long?
Yes, the research says. The shorter your message, the more likely readers are to read it, understand it and make good decisions based on it.
So how long is too long? What’s the right length for your piece? Your paragraphs? Your sentences? Your words?Find out at Rev Up Readability — our clear-writing workshop.
There, you’ll use a cool (free!) tool to analyze your message for 33 readability metrics. You’ll leave with quantifiable targets, tips and techniques for measurably boosting readability.
