“Stuart, how long must my sentences and paragraphs be…”

This is the question that one of my students asked me the other day, he was referring to the length of the sentences and paragraphs in his sales letter but the answer I gave him applies equally to any web page.

Reading text from the computer screen is very different to reading the same text off of paper, reading from the computer is much more difficult. You only have to spend a couple of hours glued to the computer screen to notice how your eyes quickly start to ache.

And what do you do when this happens, do you carry on reading? Very unlikely, if you’re anything like me you just switch off the computer and take a break.

The same holds true if what you are reading is too difficult to follow, take the following paragraph for example:

“What is the purpose of your sales letter? Of course it is to get your prospect to buy your product it has no other job in it’s life if your prospect has any problems reading or understanding your message or he is at all unclear about the meaning of some of the words in your letter do you think he’ll carry on reading it to the very end and then impatiently hit the buy button or do you think you’ll lose him before he reaches that stage without ever having had the chance to let him try your product out and you take his lovely money in your hands and kiss it because you love money so much?”

Did you manage to get through it in only one breath?

Did you even bother to try?

Terrible piece of writing isn’t it? One short sentence and one very long one – 110 words without punctuation! But it does illustrate my point – keep your sentences short and easy to read!

No matter what ‘power’ words you use or story you tell, if they are lost inside a long incomprehensible sentence they are useless – nobody is going to bother reading it!

The same goes for paragraphs, more and small is the byword. I’ve already mentioned that it is very difficult to read a large block of text on the screen as it is much more tiring on the eye. So keep your paragraphs small and don’t allow them to run away across the screen.

If you don’t make your sales letter easy to read, your prospect won’t be able to follow your story without getting tired and giving up – never to return again

A good rule of thumb is short, five line paragraphs containing no more than three short easy to read sentences.

One or two line paragraphs are also very effective.

Also remember that a high proportion of your readers may not have English as their first language. You need to keep your sentences simple – no high level words that only an English language professor would understand!

Make it simple to read and understand and your prospect will finish your story with joy in his heart and the anticipation of the power of your product to solve his problem!

This makes your sales letter more effective and will bring you closer to a sale every time.

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Stuart Elliott is a world class copywriter who has written numerous stories on sales letters and copywriting. Drop by:
http://howtowritekickbuttcopy.com to pick up a free copywriting power guide.

Article copyright Stuart Elliott 2006 all rights reserved. You may only reprint this artitcle in it’s entirety and you must include this resource box.

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