I’ve recently taken some time to review and read many web content sites, blog sites, and article sites, and one thing I’ve noticed quite often is that many people don’t seem to know when to break a line. for a paragraph in its content. Paragraphs are important for a number of reasons, and if you want your writing to be the best it’s important to know when to add a paragraph break and why.

Web content is a bit different than print in that the reader will see the content on a screen and not on a page or in a book. Many people use reading guides or their fingers or note cards to follow while reading a printed item, but this is almost impossible to do on the computer without leaving unsightly fingerprints on your monitor. That brings me to the first reason why paragraph breaks are important: to make it easier for your readers to read your content without too much eye strain.

Another reason for proper paragraph breaks is to make the writing more appealing at first glance. A page with a long scroll of unbroken writing is not only NOT attractive, it’s a bit intimidating to read too much.

Also, it’s important to break paragraph breaks when thoughts flow from one to the next, letting the reader know when a change in thought, mood, or tone has occurred in the writing. This helps break down elements of your writing into different sections with similar content, allowing the reader to more easily focus on the key points of your writing.

So how do you determine where to place a paragraph break?

Good question… Let me try to give you a good answer that will please web copywriters and editors as well as inveterate grammarians. A paragraph is a group of sentences grouped by similar meaning, intent, or content. When the thought changes or a new idea or concept is introduced, a paragraph break allows a pause to shift the reader’s mind to the new concept or idea.

Next, especially for web copy, paragraphs should be kept short. When writing for print longer paragraphs are more acceptable, but for web copy 3-5 sentences of average length is usually a good paragraph and then a paragraph break is needed.

Paragraphs are also used to break up or accent something if you’re trying to make a point, add impact. For example, if you have a sentence that has a strong point and you really want it to stand out, you can turn that sentence into a paragraph on its own, with a break before and after, making the reader really notice that. phrase.

For dialogue, there should be a paragraph break before each new speaker. This means that very short dialogue will sometimes be alone on one line. This is just the proper punctuation for the dialogue so it’s easy to see who’s saying what. For citations, short citations can be included in the same paragraph as other text, but longer citations, longer than one or two lines, must be in a paragraph by themselves. (Note that this citation information is best for web copy. If you write papers or magazine and newsprint articles, you should refer to the AP Style Guide for Newsprint, the Chicago Manual of Style, MLA, or APA style to know how to correctly cite citations for other types of writing).

Paragraphs are our friends!

When writing your copy for the web, keep these things in mind and make sure you use paragraphs correctly. Doing so will make your writing easier to read, more engaging, and help it make more sense to the reader.