Are you reading this? Or have you already skipped to the next line?
Jenny Morse, PhD
Author and CEO
Professionals use writing to communicate. That means, when I write a message, I want the person on the other end to read it and then take some action like write me back. And when I read, I’m skimming the person’s writing trying to figure out what the writer wants me to do.
Reading professional writing is not like reading a novel (or some other type of writing you enjoy). It’s not “for fun.” It’s for content, information, action. So, it’s not necessary for your reader to read every single word in a professional message. The reader only needs to read as many words as it takes to figure out what you want and how to carry it out.
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That means people are skimming. Research on how people read shows that our eyes are moving around the page as we read. We think we read each line left to right, top to bottom, in order. But we don’t. In English, we move our eyes from left to right, but many people do not move their eyes all the way to the end of the line. And our eyes also are not moving in a straight, constant line. Our eyes jump in these little saccades, so we glance at a word or small group of words at a time before moving to the next word or group of words. Reading is really a jerky experience full of awkward pauses, but that’s not how it feels to most of us as we are reading.
Here’s an illustration of how someone’s eyes might move as they’re reading:
How does this affect you?
Most people read the first half of the first line of each paragraph. As an illustration, I’m underlining about that much in each of the paragraphs in this blog. Now, the underlining may draw your attention, so you might be more likely to read those parts of the particular blog post, but the point is only to illustrate about how much any person might read of this blog.
If I can only count on my reader to read that much, then, as a professional, who uses writing to communicate, I need to make sure to put the most important and useful information in that part of the paragraph, so the audience is most likely to reader it.
I repeat: put the most important information in the first half of the first line of each paragraph. That way, even some skimming is likely to see the key ideas throughout your message. I often check this part of my messages when I am reviewing them. After writing up the message, I’ll look at just what the first half of the first line of each paragraph says. If those places have useful information, we’re good. If those places don’t tell the reader the most important content of my message, I need to revise.
For example, read just the underlined portions of this blog post.
Did you learn something? Then I put the most important information in the right place!
