Bite sized chunks are more digestible?

[everydayupsanddowns]

Occasionally I recognise I get a little carried away with a response to a post, and my reply can run into several paragraphs.

I was reminded today that there are some members on the forum who may have some degree of visual impairment, and I wonder whether longer posts, particularly if they become quite dense and technical, might be easier to read if they were broken into smaller pieces.

This is what I will be trying to do from now on, and I think it’s probably quite a helpful approach.

Hopefully the slight tweaks to forum style as part of the upgrade (which is due to launch on Tuesday) and which should adapt better on smartphones and tablets will improve legibility too.

What do people think? Would this be a helpful approach?

 

[silentsquirrel]

Absolutely!

It isn't the number of paragraphs that deters me from reading, but the length of each paragraph. Posts without any paragraphs at all are very hard to read unless very brief.

Spaces between paragraphs do help enormously.

 

[trophywench]

Nobody can eat a whole elephant.

First - divide it into bite sized pieces!

(Standard 'Graduate Trainee' management course material, if I'm not mistaken, Mike! Keep your eye open for someone posting an apparently random list of totally unconnected words with instructions to remember them...…)

 

[Eddy Edson]

Absolutely!

It isn't the number of paragraphs that deters me from reading, but the length of each paragraph. Posts without any paragraphs at all are very hard to read unless very brief.

Spaces between paragraphs do help enormously.

Yes!

The rule I learnt in journalism classes: Three sentences max per para (and try to make the sentences short).

 

[Tee G]

Im guilty of verbal dia..... will keep it brief in future. 😳

 

[missclb]

Yeah, agreed. Definitely better for being easier on the eye.

And super important bits can be bold. Teaching your grandmother to suck eggs can be italics!

 

[SB2015]

I find it useful if responding to a few questions from someone to separate with headings to each paragraph, mainly because that is how I find it easier to access the info, and useful when looking back at a post. It looks a bit less informal but there are pros and cons to whatever we do. I can easily break these up into separate posts.

 

[Neens]

Me too @Tee G - will end my essays😉 - it is a blogger lesson and one I should have applied to forum posts and the elephant a training exercise in many fields.

Sometimes people get confused to who you are replying to in posts even if you tag or quote the thread.

This is why I sometimes end up posting 3 separate responses.

 

[Pine Marten]

Agreement from me too. I used to work in exhibition galleries, and know from that experience that long chunks of text are not easy to read.

I don't have a visual impairment but legibility is paramount online.

 

[nonethewiser]

Always think less is more, long posts replies so off putting.

Long paragraphs or no break in text really have trouble to read so usually don't bother with them, 4 lines at most is enough before starting new paragraph.