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Use subheads
One proven device for keeping a reader moving forward through an article is to insert subheads (subheadings) every few paragraphs. Just as a well-written heading can draw a reader into a story that he or she might otherwise skip over, subheads provide a visual road-sign for readers, alerting them that something different and potentially interesting is coming up.

The job of the subhead is to pick out a word, phrase, or idea from the following few paragraphs that will make the reader want to keep reading. The cleverest newspaper editors use a similar device when they have an article that is so long it must “jump’’ from one page to the next. Just before the article jumps, make sure there’s an intriguing phrase. One feature-article editor for the Wall Street Journal used to say that the ultimate sentence that could appear before a “jump’’ is “...and then the shit hit the fan.”

This approach is not unlike the classic “cliffhanger’’ that film and TV directors use to end an episode in a serial movie or TV show—the heroine dangling over a chasm, moments away from sudden death. To find out what happens, you need to tune in again.

But subheads don’t necessarily need to be dramatic. If you’re writing a story about a stock-market analyst’s predictions, for instance, and the analyst is saying that the overall market will decline over the next year but that stocks in a particular sector will rise, you’ll need to lead with one idea or the other—probably the overall market. But a well-placed subheading that says “Companies that will buck the trend’’ will entice at least some readers to continue on to that section.

To see how some of the most web-friendly sites use subheadings to keep their articles moving along, look at the CNN website. You’ll notice that in addition to the way the subheads function on a textual level, they also serve a design function—breaking up the otherwise uniform blocks of type into less-forbidding looking chunks.

For subheads to be truly effective on the Web, they must be used liberally. Some websites use subheads, but place them too far apart to be helpful. A subhead every six or seven paragraphs can be okay in print, but only because a reader is looking at a much larger piece of text than the web reader ever sees at a given moment.

The subheads used in this introduction, for instance, would be much too widely spaced for the Web. Online, either on the Web or in email, you should insert subheads often enough so that a reader never scrolls for more than a screen and a half without seeing one.


Next: Web paragraphs are different
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