Quick! Which of these paragraphs would you rather read? This 11-word paragraph, from The New York Times?

Until then, Mr. Stratton waits and continues his daily balancing act.

Or this 146-word paragraph from an Amazon release?

Paragraphs are visual cues.

That’s the problem with long paragraphs: Readers make decisions about your message based not on what you said or on how well you said it but on what it looks like after you’ve said it.

“Long paragraphs are a visual predictor that a story won’t work.”

— Jon Ziomek, associate professor at the Medill School of Journalism

And paragraph length is one of your message’s most important visual cues.

“Long paragraphs are a visual predictor that a story won’t work,” says Jon Ziomek, associate professor at the Medill School of Journalism.

So how long is too long for a paragraph?

Write like the Times.

We turned to The New York Times to find out. We analyzed 99 stories in a single edition of the paper. (We skipped the sports pages.) On that day, the Times’ paragraph length:

• Ranged from 9.6 to 67.5 words long
• Averaged 36 words per paragraph.
• Weighed in at a median of 37 words per paragraph.

Why are PR paragraphs so long?

PR pros: Take a tip from the Times and make your paragraphs short and sweet. Avoid long PR paragraphs like this 108-word paragraph from an SBA release:

And this 126-word paragraph from Fabletics:

If your paragraphs are 100 and 200 words long, readers will skip them. Instead break up longer paragraphs into shorter paragraphs.

Still concerned about the old hard-and-fast rule of thumb for paragraph construction for academic writing that you learned in English class? A good paragraph has a topic sentence, three developing sentences and a concluding sentence?

This ain’t academic writing! Good writers write press release and blog-post paragraphs that get read. Need a line break? Hit return more often. (Add that to your style guide!)

Make ’em punchy.

While you’re at it, why not break up your copy with some super-short paragraphs like these from the Times, which weigh in at …

16 words

And yet Mr. Monis had repeatedly come to the attention of community leaders and the authorities.

14 words

Its broadband package is also the home to the sports broadcaster ESPN in Britain.

13 words

Glen Hauenstein, Delta’s chief revenue officer, was running with the theme last week.

12 words

In February, the activist investor raised its bid to $21 a share.

11 words

“No matter what I did, I couldn’t find peace,” he said.

9 words

Apple could pay more than $350 million in damages.

Now, those are paragraphs that go down easy.

What’s your average paragraph length?

How long should the lead paragraph be?

“‘In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.’ The creation of the universe has a 10-word lead! So why do you need 40 words to say that your chief accountant has just completed the necessary certification? The answer, of course, is you don’t.”

— John McIntyre, copy desk chief of the Baltimore Sun

Yet PR pros keep cranking out leads like this 99-word one from an Amazon release:

How long should PR leads be?

Keep your release and pitch lead to 25 words — a couple of sentences — or so.

Longer, and it starts looking too thick to encourage readership.

Shorter, and news portals might not recognize it as a lead paragraph — or your release as a release. Google News, for instance, rejects releases that are nothing but bullet points and one-sentence paragraphs. Advisory releases often get rejected for this reason.

To avoid this, start with a “real” paragraph that includes at least two sentences.

Limit the background in the lead.

One way to take the lead out of the lead: Limit the background to no more than six words.

Background information is any parenthetical information — information that appears between commas, parentheses or dashes, like this phrase — including:

• People’s titles or ages after their names: (“Chris Smith, 29, proofreading guru, says …”)
• Boilerplate descriptions of your company or products (“RevUpReadership.com, a toolbox for writers, is now available …”)
• Stock exchange symbols (“Apple Inc. (AAPL) today announced that …”)

That doesn’t mean that these things aren’t important or that you won’t include them in your piece. Just be selective with what and how much you put in the lead. Then move the rest down.

You want your lead to clip along quickly. But background information slows the top of the story down.

If the verb is the story in news releases (and it is), the story (weak though it may be) in this Guardian release got buried under 28 words, 20 of them background information:

Now, that story is a far cry from the creation of the universe. But that lead is nearly six times as long.

Start with a bang.

And make the most of those first few words. Otherwise, you’ll lose journalists.

“If the copy doesn’t excite me within 20 words, I won’t read the rest of it,” says one editor quoted by Jack Appleman, president of SG Communications.

Here, by the way, are the first 20 words of that Amazon release:

Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com company (NASDAQ:AMZN), today announced that it has contracted with EDP Renewables to construct …

Snooooooooooooooze.

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The problem with long paragraphs is that they look hard to read. And because they look hard to read, people don’t read them.

That’s right: Readers skip long paragraphs. So if your paragraph is too long, you might as well stamp on it in red ink, “Don’t bother reading this paragraph. Our lawyers made us add this stuff. We formatted it this way on so you’d skip it.”

“Long paragraphs are a visual predictor that a story won’t work.”

— Jon Ziomek, associate professor at the Medill School of Journalism

If you’re cranking out paragraphs of 200 words, nobody’s going to read them. So how long is too long for a paragraph?

Write like the Times.

We turned to The New York Times to find out. We analyzed all of the stories in a single edition of the Times. (We skipped the sports pages.) On this day, paper’s paragraphs:

• Ranged from 9.6 to 67.5 words long.
• Averaged 36 words per paragraph.
• Weighed in at a median of 37 words per paragraph.

Hey, if it works for the Times, it works for me. Let’s aim for a rule of thumb of 36 to 37 words per paragraph. An occasional 9- or 68-word paragraph? That works for me, too.

And what about the number of sentences per paragraph? The Times’ paragraphs:

• Ranged from 1.3 to 9 sentences per paragraph.
• Averaged 2.4 sentences per paragraph.
• Weighed in at a median of two sentences per paragraph.

Are you having flashbacks to your third-grade English class? Are you remembering your teacher telling you that a paragraph includes five sentences: a topic sentence, three developing sentences and a concluding sentence?

That’s academic writing. This is marketing writing. Your audience members are never going to read those 200-word paragraphs. (Remember: Your teachers got paid to reach what you wrote.)

So how do you turn longer paragraphs into shorter paragraphs?

To craft short paragraphs:

1. Hit return more often.

This may be the easiest single thing you can do to cut through the clutter in your copy.

I know, I know. Your third-grade teacher taught you that paragraphs were one unit of thought. They are. Just as your entire piece covers one idea, your sentences are units of thought, your words each express a single idea — heck, even the syllables each convey a concept.

You just need to see your thoughts as smaller, more discrete units.

David A. Fryxell, former editor of Writer’s Digest, recommends that you hit return when you need to:

• Pause
• Elaborate
• Change topic
• Make an aside
• Present a quote
• Shift time or place
• Emphasize a key point
• Explain a subsidiary idea
• Offer an opposing viewpoint
• Change the rhythm of your piece
• Move to the next item on your list

Great guidelines. But the only real rule is that you place your curser after a period before you hit return.

2. Tweak it.

Look for ways to shorten your paragraph by cutting sentences, phrases and words.

3. Break it with bullets.

If you have a series of three or more items, break them out of the paragraph in a bulleted or numbered list. Bullets not only break up a paragraph, but they also cut words by eliminating the need for transitions.

What about the lead paragraph?

With the lead paragraph, you have a choice. You can build a bridge that your readers can easily walk over to get into your story. Or you can erect an obstacle that readers have to climb over to get into your story.

What’s a good length for a bridge?

Twenty-five words, according to the Circulation Managers Association Education Committee.

But a great lead can be even shorter. You can often open a release, posting, brochure or article in a single sentence — even a single phrase. (Remember, you don’t have to tell the whole story in the lead. That’s what the rest of the article is for!)

When The Wall Street Journal covered the fact that Douglas Investor, chairman of Coca-Cola, was leaving his post after only two years on the job, the first paragraph read in its entirety:

So fast?

Return.

It’s not the job of the first paragraph to tell the whole story. That’s the job of the whole story. The job of the first paragraph is to get the story started — and get people to read the second paragraph.

Learn more about paragraph length.

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