With dwindling attention spans, readers baulk at a big block of text. We don’t read, we scan.

How should writers cope?

Here’s a good example from The Times Of India editorial today on India’s economic situation.

The post has 8 paras and around 14 data points. But you don’t get overwhelmed reading the same…

That’s because of the short, pithy summaries on top of each para, and the overall summary above the entire edit.

Write for the scanning reader. Use short summaries at different ‘levels’ of your content. Those who are interested, will take the time and effort to go through the full detail.

You can use this technique for longish emails, word docs and presentations.