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Web paragraphs are different
To make your documents efficient and attractive for online readers, you need to ensure that the structure of the writing—the way that sentences and paragraphs are arranged on the screen—is suitable for web reading. Among the most important elements of structure for online reading is paragraph length.
 
Although you can consult a dozen writing guides and find many "rules" about how to write paragraphs, there really aren't any rules. The ideal paragraph length depends not only on the kind of writing you're doing and the style and tone you adopt, but also on the format and medium in which you're writing. It's as much a visual as a verbal issue.

Different kinds of writing demand different average paragraph lengths. The classic tabloid newspaper style is to make each sentence a paragraph, and to keep each sentence short. Paragraphs average fewer than a dozen words. This creates a telegraphic, immediate style appropriate for news stories, and is well suited to the narrow text columns of tabloids. "Quality" broadsheet newspapers favor a more discursive style. Paragraphs in The New York Times, for instance, tend to be more in the range of 50 to 60 words.

The structure for formal essays—followed by many magazine and book writers—runs toward longer paragraphs, sometimes considerably longer. This is the style of writing usually taught in schools. Each paragraph, ideally, deals with a single thought. The first sentence is the "topic sentence," setting forth the main idea. The thought is developed in succeeding sentences. Distinctions and connections are made, qualifications are introduced, and examples given. Further points are sometimes included; contrasting material is sometimes provided as well.

This kind of formal paragraph can easily run on to 100 or more words, with no real upward limit. Some notable writers—Marcel Proust, for example—wrote paragraphs that go on for pages. At some point, however, the thought is concluded—typically with a short sentence.

The preceding four paragraphs of this article, in fact, would make up such a "classic" paragraph, and many book editors would have run them together into one paragraph. Altogether, they are 271 words. But even in a book like this, such a fat, dense, paragraph could be off-putting. On a webpage, it would be deadly. It would be like walking into a McDonald's and being ushered to a table with linen and silverware and a six-page menu. Not what you had in mind.

The rules for structuring writing for print have evolved over centuries; the rules for structuring online text are still emerging. In this, as in many other questions of online style, it's instructive to look at what the most successful websites do. Check out the way that sites like Yahoo, Excite, Microsoft, and CNET handle paragraph length.

As you'll see, on the Web—generally speaking—shorter is better. One of the handiest tools for the online writer is the word-processor's word-count function. Try it. Live by it. If you're consistently writing paragraphs with more than 50 words, you should probably lighten up.

(The paragraph you’ve just read, at 45 words, is about the right length for the Web.)


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