Why is the title of this article wrong? Because we will not tell you how to write it, but we will indicate how it should look. No text is more than just content. It is also a set of rules adopted by the author that affect its form, reading intentions, interpretation and focus of the reader’s attention. Hence the decision to speak about what should be in the text, and not about what the text should be.
- The inverted pyramid principle
- Dividing the text into headings
- Concise and to the point
- Take care of the conclusions
The inverted pyramid principle
Let’s start with the most important. What does it mean? The principle of the inverted pyramid is one of the foundations of the profession of a journalist. It talks about putting the most important first, putting the details in the middle of the text, and the less important information at the end. Simplification:
- Heading – can be interrogative, stating or in the form of a quote
- Lead – an introduction that contains the most important information / summarizes the article
- Episodes / titles / subtitles – have detailed information / introduce the following parts
- Comments / expert opinions – contain additional information.
When creating text, use the 5W principle:
What what?
Who is who?
Where – Where?
When – when?
Why why? / For what? / For what purpose?
By following this rule, you will increase the likelihood that your text will be complete. Remember that this should not be done if the text is informative. This is a form that should be objective in its message.
Breakdown of text into headings
We once asked one of the girls – the author of the blog – why she does not use H2 and H3 headers in WordPress. She replied that it looked ugly and didn’t want one headline to be bigger than the other. We explained that it was a matter of a few code changes, but we weren’t convincing enough. Such a joke, let’s get back to the topic.
The division into headings is not only a convenience for the user, who can take a breather and rest his eyes. It is also an important action from a technical point of view. Then the robots of the search engine know that the specified heading (H1, H2, H3 …) is one of the elements of the text that should be taken into account.
There are as many specialists as there are options for using titles. When browsing expert forums and blogs, you may come across the use of: H1> H2> H3> H3 or H1 as a heading> H2> H3> H2> H2 – the number next to the H indicates importance. 1 is the most important, 2 is important, but less than 1, and so on…
Short and to the point
Read this text out loud and you will realize that there is nothing worse than long sentences where someone has put a period only where the second or third sentence should be, and you continue to read them as one and wait for it to end, and they are all are still continuing. Hard right? Therefore, avoid long sentences. We do not mean going from extremes to extremes and creating texts based on the story of Kali, who just wanted to eat and drink.
Find the middle ground and use sentences of the correct length. There will probably be people asking “what sentence length is appropriate”. Remember the noun, verb, adjective, conjunctions. In any case, if you are already in this part of the text, it means that it is good. Short and to the point.
Take care of the flow
Many wise heads in journalism, marketing or advertising have said that the text should be like a Hitchcock movie – it starts with an earthquake and then only gets stronger. And there is a lot of truth in it. Remember that you only have a moment to engage the reader. If she doesn’t find anything special in the lead, she won’t read any further.
Allow the reader to follow the text and clearly familiarize themselves with the following elements of your content. That is why it is so important that the text is consistent, correctly divided and transitions between paragraphs. Use the headings mentioned above and tell the reader what the section they are about to read will be about. Here, as in the title, you can use a question, narrative or quotation form.
And finally, the most important thing. Don’t jump on strings. Sort them, think where you want to start, following the chronology. A reader who doesn’t understand your text will get angry and may not come back to you. He is not angry because he does not understand what you are writing to him. He will be angry because you wasted his time.