Pay Attention To Your Formatting

Have you ever been to blogs or read reports that have great content but fell asleep because of the atrocious way the content is structured?

I certainly have came across a few, and it is such a pity as the content is genuinely great.

This shows one thing:

Formatting Is Important!

To be honest, I have not always pay particular attention to my formatting when it comes to this blog, so I’m not really practising what I preach. One thing for sure, I will definitely be looking to improve the way things are being done here in future.

Ok, let’s get straight to the point.

Here are some vital formatting tips to help improve readability that will keep your visitors coming back (that is assuming your content is already quality).

• Capitalize the starting letter of every word in your headline. Take the headline of this post for example. “Pay Attention To Your Formatting” sure looks nicer and more professional than “Pay attention to your formatting” or “pay attention to your headline” isn’t it?

• Keep your paragraphing to a maximum of 6 lines. 3-5 is good. A paragraph containing only one line is fine too.

• Use sub-headlines. These are useful for guiding and hand holding the readers through your post or report. This is especially important when your report is long, and you need to keep your readers interested enough to make him want to read through all the way to the end.

• Use bullets. It acts as a form of mini headlines to grab attention.

• Keep the formatting simple and constant. Changing and chopping the formatting style will only confuse readers. And when readers are confused, they will LEAVE!

• Use font that are optimized for net reading which are easy on the eyes. I personally use Verdana for this blog. Some others use Ariel or Courier which are okay too.

• Don’t use small font size. This is one big turn off that will definitely put a reader to sleep. It sure does for me.

• Use bolding, highlighting and underlining appropriately to bring the reader’s attention to important messages.

Alright, I hope you found this post useful. Do you have any formatting tips of your own to share. Let’s hear them!

[tags]Formatting, Paragraphing[/tags]

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Thanx for the tips. Sure will take note. Check out on my first post…I mess up a bit tho.

These are great tips, especially the capitalization one. I have to keep reminding myself to do this, as it takes a while before it becomes intuitive.

Hi Rokiah,

I went to your site. Good job, considering it’s your first blog.

Keep going!

Cheers,
YongSing Jag

Dear J.D,

I used to make the very same mistake myself too till a friend of mine corrected me. Just refer back to me earlier posts of this blog when I was just starting out.

Capitalizing the starting letter of each word in the headline/sub headline certainly helps to grab attention and improve the look.

Glad you have found the tips useful so far.

Cheers,
YongSing Jag

These are really good tips. Formatting is important to make something readable. I would also suggest that people take a look at their design as well.

I think some all too common mistakes people should avoid:

- Using non-standard typefaces. Comic sans is not fun to read.

- Not paying attention to contrast. Black type on white background is the easiest to read. If you do something different for stylistic effect, make sure your copy is still readable.

- Background images behind the text. Again, it makes the copy very tiring to read.

- Using music or sounds. If you have something you want people to read. Let them read it. It’s difficult to focus on what I’m reading if you’re playing P. Diddy in the background.

There are many more mistakes to be made, but if people focus on readability and a clear layout, they will avoid most of them.

Hi YanQui,

Great information there!

You mentioned a lot of good points especially music playing in the background. We don’t play it unless the readers specifically press the ‘play’ button to hear it.

I agree with you that black text on white background is the best! Simple and clean.

It can be very irritating.

For sure, readability is a major issue that every publisher must pay attention to.

Thanks for your input!

Cheers,
YongSing Jag

I didn’t even realize you had sound on your site. It’s a good measure to have it disabled by default and allow the user to play it if they wish.

Hi Yanqui,

Maybe I phrase my reply wrongly. Sorry for that. I don’t have music on my site. I don’t like having that, because I want the reader to concentrate on the content.

In any case, like you pointed out, the music player should be disabled by default.

Cheers,
Yong Sing Jag

Not sure if this falls under formatting, but making sure that you don?t have odd symbols popping up in your text is a good idea! I use a Spanish-formatted keyboard and if I?m not paying attention, I end up with quite a few errors in my text which can be very irritating to readers.

Hi Genesis,

I think such odd symbols happen when your browser and your computer doesn’t have the capability to support a foreign language (e.g. Chinese).

These things happen and I agree it can be very distracting, not to mention. bewildering to the readers.

Thanks for pointing that out!

Cheers,
YongSing Jag

Hi

I fully agree with you that formatting is important and I would like to add that font color and background color are also important. I prefer a white background with dark text. It must easy to read. If the it isn’t easy to read I will move on to someone else’s website.

Hi Lynn,

As you mentioned, black text on white background is easy on the eye. Simple works.

Just look at Google. Simple. No frills. And great!

Cheers,
YongSing Jag

Well, there used to be different styles accepted such as for journalism and advertising.

I think all that pretty much went out the window with the interwebs.

Hi,

You make a good point. Web writing formatting is pretty different from print writing.

Over in the net, there is much more emphasis on readability and usability as the net users are very much in a ‘hurry’ mode. If the website has little to keep them staying, they will just leave and never come back.

And a vital aspect to keep them to stay is the very fundamental basic of having good formatting.

Cheers,
YongSing Jag

[...] Lots of white space, ample sub-headings, short sentences, bolding and bulleting go a long way in improving readability. This is covered in my previous formatting post. [...]

[...] Lots of white space, ample sub-headings, short sentences, bolding and bulleting go a long way in improving readability. This is covered in my previous formatting post. [...]

These are very useful tips. Appearances catches everyone’s attention.