Myth: People Don’t Read, They Scan

One way to attract people is to keep your posts short. The argument goes, “People don’t read, they scan”. This is true to a certain degree, but rather than focusing on the magic length of a post, you ought to focus on the structure of your post. Design it to be interesting content wise as well as visually interesting.

The reason people scan when on the Web has little to do with length of a post. The act of scanning headlines, subheadlines and other emphasized text, is not a replacement for reading: it’s just the first step of reading. We do this to find the most important information, quickly and efficiently. When we find what we are looking for, we begin to read, maybe just a paragraph, maybe the entire article.

Write to Capture Scanners, Write Well to Capture Readers

So whether the article is short or long it needs to be easily scannable so your visitors can find what they are looking for and start reading. Headlines, subheadlines, bullet lists, etc. can all be used as a ways to help you visitors navigate to the content they are looking for.

If you write a six paragraph article with nothing embellishing it, you may have just as well written nothing at all. Remember, your visitors need to be guided through your site and its content.