What should be the ideal length of sentences in a blog post for ease of reading?
I have heard many times that you should always keep the sentence length to the minimum as possible, as it makes reading easy, fast and more important understandable to readers.
I'm wondering: What should be the ideal length threshold to follow for a sentence while writing a blog post?
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It depends on your intended audience.
If your audience is literature professors, then you can use pretty long and complex sentences, as long as you make sure that they are reasonably well-written. Indeed, those professors probably will get quite annoyed if all your sentences are too short and simple.
You write for high school dropouts? Prefer short and simple sentences. Complex sentences challenge them.
Of course the two examples above are extremes. But the basic point is, adapt to your audience.
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Generally, a sentence in writing should be 10 words or less with 7 WoL being your goal. You can have longer sentences, but if you do, they should be used sparingly or with good reason (such as an excerpt of purple prose for your readers). Longer sentences add more information and more information creates more opportunity to be unclear or confusing. As with all things in writing: just be careful how you do it.
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There is no specific rule about how many words should be there in a easy sentence. As long as the words used are not too complex, not repeating, and are delivering the message clearly, the sentence could be as long as 20 to 40 words (1-2 lines).
Focus more on the grammar and punctuation, as they have to be correct for the content to be easily understandable.
(I'm considering that the audience of your blog is common public.)
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In general, writing for the web is expected to be shorter, with briefer sentences, paragraphs, and sections.
I have found PlainLanguage.gov's guidelines extremely helpful. (I linked to the "be concise" section.)
I also really like NNGroup's articles about User Experience design (they used to be "useit.com", which made their focus on usability very clear.) https://www.nngroup.com/topic/writing-web/ is the most relevant category. Some specific articles:
The F-Shaped Scanning Pattern shows how users scan online, especially when they're not sure if they're invested in your material yet.
The Inverted Pyramid - start with your most relevant/important content at the start, instead of leading up to it. an excerpt...
- Identify your key points. What piece of information is the key fact you want your readers to know, even if they only read a single paragraph or sentence on the page? What effectively summarizes all the information that will follow?
- Rank secondary information. Outline the story details and supporting information, prioritizing the information that is most likely to be of interest to the broadest audience, and moving down the list to the smaller and more nuanced details.
- Write well and concisely. The structure only helps readers if the content is strong. Cut unnecessary information. Get to the point quickly. Use straightforward language. Use short paragraphs and bulleted lists.
- Frontload all elements of content with important information. The main headline should be descriptive. The story should start with the main point. Each heading or subheading should be descriptive. The first sentence of every paragraph should be the most important. The first words in each sentence should be information-carrying and indicate what content will follow.
Plan Language is for Everyone, Even Experts.
If you think clearly, you will express yourself clearly. Your audience wants easy-to-read content that allows them to get the gist of the message efficiently. No one has ever complained that a text was too easy to understand.
Writing for Lower Literacy Users (which may be 30% of your readers!) Basically, they do NOT scan/skim, but they still want the inverted-pyramid -- most important information first.)
Again, different blogs have different goals and audiences, but on the whole, simpler seems to be better. Still include as much information as is relevant, and vary sentences and everything for stylistic choices and to stay true to your own writing voice. But recognize the audiences may be less patient than you'd wish; simplicity seems to be the current ideal.
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