There’s a good reason we have the acronym TL;DR (too long, didn’t read). We need to set aside some of what we learned in school and write content first for accuracy and readability, and next for scannability.
The numbers vary a bit across studies, but generally as few as 60% of people read online content to the end, and only about two-thirds even scroll beyond the first page.
Making sure that your content is easily scannable is the key to your main points being seen. You may be thinking that you write documents, not websites, so this doesn’t apply to you. Actually, it does: If you offer your audience a PDF on your website, there’s a very high chance that, rather than printing it out, they will read it online.
So, how do you make your content more scannable?
- Shorter sentences. Break those long sentences into multiple smaller ones, and use plenty of paragraph breaks. This will make your text easier to scan and will catch those readers who read only the first few lines of a paragraph.
- Subheads. Carefully worded headings and subheads break your content into discrete sections. Many readers will at least scan a paper across those headings, so use them to give your outline and help readers zero in on the parts most important to them (and to you).
- Inline heads. In all but the most simple lists, start each item with a bold word or phrase followed by a period or colon (this is called an inline head).
- Internal links. For longer docs, use links within your content to take readers to other sections of the document. This is especially useful in a mini table of contents at the beginning, or for links in an introduction to more detailed sections.
(I posted this to LinkedIn in early August 2025)