Over on Mashable, Josh Catone correctly notes that:

“Text is a very important part of user experience on the web, so it needs and deserves the same sort of design consideration. You must make your text usable in the same manner that you do the rest of your website or social media campaign materials.”

I do think the post doesn’t go far enough, though. I agree that “large blocks of text are your enemy,” but I think paragraphs of eight or nine lines in length are good candidates for being broken into two paragraphs … especially when the character count for the width of those paragraphs is in excess of 90. Many usability experts say 70-80 should be the maximum.

I’d add a sixth point to Josh’s excellent five: Utilize Punctuation. Long dashes, ellipses, parentheses and more — even boldface and italics (though font, of course, not punctuation) — these can all contribute to breaking up that gray box of text, making it that much easier for the reader to absorb.

Takeaway for marketers: Creating good copy is both a science and an art. It’s knowing the rules of the medium in which you’re working as much as it is understanding the business for which you’re writing.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 17th, 2009 at 7:32 am and is filed under Internet Stuff, Marketing Takeaways, Social Media.