When sharing information about complex topics, or presenting detailed data, the best writers know that even subject-savvy readers can get lost or overwhelmed. Our brains need help processing the deluge of concepts, statistics, and jargon that fly off the page as if being discharged from a confetti cannon.
One of the simplest, and best, ways to avoid reader fatigue is to break your content into smaller chunks. Many of us have been taught the “one paragraph, one idea” rule, but by adding more white space, you’re giving your reader permission to digest one idea before moving on to the next.
Have a look at these successive paragraphs from a November 2021 report from the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council discussing the progress of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives (numbering mine, and superscripts removed for clarity):
“(1) In 2017, MassBio, in partnership with Liftstream, released a report focused on establishing why women in the biopharma industry weren’t advancing in their careers at the same rate as men. The basis of that report was a comprehensive survey of Massachusetts biopharma companies. According to those data, Massachusetts biopharma companies reported their C-Suite was 24% women and their Boards were 14% women.
(2) Four years later, gender diversity at the C-Suite remains the same, with this survey reporting 24% female representation. However, while this level remains flat since 2017, C-Suite gender diversity in the Massachusetts’ biopharma industry is at a higher level than in Massachusetts’ top 100 biggest public companies, across industries, as recently measured by The Boston Club in conjunction with Bentley University (24% vs. 21%).
(3) The major shift is at the Board level with this survey reporting 37% female representation on biopharma Boards in 2021—a 164% increase over four years.
(4) This significant shift of gender diversity at the Board level can be attributed to a range of internal and external factors. However, there can be little doubt that the many public and private commitments of life sciences companies made over the past four years toward increasing Board gender diversity have produced positive results.”
The authors could have combined paragraphs 2, 3, and 4 without breaking any rules of writing since those paragraphs focus on a single shared topic of their most recent gender diversity data. But wisely, they didn’t. I especially like the break between paragraph (3), which is just a single sentence, and paragraph 4. As a reader, I’m invited to first digest the truly remarkable piece of data of the 164% increase in female representation on boards. Once that sinks in, I’m ready to move on to understand the reason for that increase, addressed in paragraph (4).
By chunking your writing, you’ll save your reader frustration and the time they may have wasted rereading an otherwise large mass of too-congested text.