Content Creator Basics: Help Your Readers With Scannable Headings, Paragraphs, and Lists

Welcome to another post in the Content Creator Basics series. Here, we’ll share our go-to tips for flexing your freelance writer muscles—whether you’re writing content for someone else or for your own blog. Check in each month for more tips to sharpen your online content writing skills.

As a freelance writer, you want your readers to get useful or interesting information out of your blog post. But as a web reader, you likely scan blogs, looking for reference points to quickly understand what the blog is about.

How do you make your own writing scannable and straightforward? One way is by using easy-to-follow headings, paragraphs, and lists. By applying these tips, you’ll help web readers discover all your blog has to offer.

HEADINGS

Headings are the first tool that web readers use to scan your blog. With proper formatting, headings can be an invaluable map to your blog’s main points. Make the most of your headings with the following tips.

1. Make Headings Noticeable

Headings that blend into the text won’t do your readers any favors. Ensure your headings catch your readers’ attention immediately. You can do this in a variety of ways:

• Increase their font size.
• Bold or italicize them.
• Put them on their own line.
• Put them in title case.

Avoid underlining your headings. This is considered old-fashioned as underlined web text often indicates that the text includes a hyperlink.

2. Make Subheadings Different

Don’t confuse readers with headings that all look the same. Help readers understand the structure of your blog post with different formatting for main headings and subheadings. To differentiate between the two, use a different format for your subheadings with the suggestions above.

If you use different formatting styles to differentiate your headings and subheadings, you’ll help readers understand when the main section starts and ends, as well as when you discuss additional ideas within the main sections themselves.

3. Make Headings Coherent and Relevant

Readers use headings to understand what a section is about. Headings that try to be merely clever, punny, or ambiguous might frustrate the reader. Instead, make sure a heading fully encompasses what the section will be about to avoid any confusion.

4. Make Headings Concise

Web readers appreciate to-the-point statements. Therefore, keep your headings as concise and straightforward as possible. While having six words is optimal, don’t take shortcuts. Ensure that readers get a full picture of what the section is about. Therefore, if you want to have a slightly longer heading, that’s fine — just take out anything unnecessary.

To demonstrate the difference between a concise and wordy title, consider this example:

Concise: Talk to Your Friends

Wordy: Engage in Conversation With Non-Related People You Enjoy Spending Time With

The wordy heading is an extreme example. However, it illustrates that you can make verbose and unclear headings better with straightforward, clear words.

5. Make Headings Parallel

Having similar heading structures organizes your headings and allows for quick scanning. Learn more about parallelism in this blog post.

PARAGRAPHS

While headings spell out the main ideas, paragraphs are where you should put the meat of the content. However, if you have paragraphs that deter readers, they won’t be able to enjoy what your blog post has to offer. Help readers scan your paragraphs quickly, yet comprehensively, with the following tips.

1. Keep Paragraphs Short

When you come across a blog post with long paragraphs, you likely are turned off and intimidated by their length. Your readers are likely to feel the same way.

Keep paragraphs short by limiting the number of lines per paragraph or the number of sentences per paragraph. WritersDomain recommends four lines or less per paragraph, while the Yahoo! Style Guide emphasizes that two or three sentences are ideal for one paragraph.

2. Have One Main Idea

Don’t allow paragraphs to have two or more ideas. Instead, focus each paragraph on its own idea or topic. This allows for both easy organization and scanning.

LISTS

Lists are a helpful tool to organize a large amount of information in an easily digestible way. However, you need to make sure you don’t overwhelm or confuse readers with badly organized, lengthy, or unnecessary lists.

1. Use the Right List Type

When it comes to lists, you should consider which type is most effective for the information you want to present. If you outline a process, then a numbered list is best. If you group information like benefits, features, or services together, then a bulleted list is ideal.

Also, if you have a short list of just a few items, consider an in-line list that you’ll include in the paragraph itself. For example, the official French motto, “Liberté, égalité, fraternité,” or “Liberty, equality, fraternity” in English, is easily summed up in a sentence. While you could put these three list items in a bulleted list, the short nature of their words works best in an in-line list.

2. Always Start With a Colon

Readers need to recognize when you start a list. Instead of unceremoniously placing a list after a paragraph, set up the list with a colon. This punctuation symbol is common for starting a list.

Additionally, you don’t always need a complete sentence before your colon. This rule can vary based on the writing style you follow, so consult a style guide to be sure.

3. Have List Subheadings for Longer List Items

Does your list have list items that require headings of their own? This often happens when you want to further explain a list item beyond a few words. Consider the following example:

What common issues can you experience with a furnace? You might discover your furnace has a:

• • Bad air filter: Old, dirty, and clogged air filters can inhibit warm air from entering your home.
  • Thermostat issue: Your thermostat’s battery might be dead or dying, or you might have forgotten to reset it when you switched to heating.

Formatting list subheadings will help your list subheadings stand out. We should note that while standalone headings should be on their own line, you can put list subheadings in-line. Style subheadings with either sentence or title case — just make sure to be consistent — and make the text italicized or bolded. You can also separate the headings from the content that follows with colons, em dashes, or periods.

No matter what you do with your subheadings, the subheadings guide readers into finding the information they need quickly.

4. Don’t Make Individual List Items Too Long

As with long paragraphs, don’t make individual list items too long. You can roughly follow the same rules as outlined for paragraph lengths above when you are considering list item paragraphs.

5. Keep List Items Parallel

As mentioned with standalone headings, list items should be similar in structure, including subheadings. Note the difference between non-parallel and parallel list items with this example:

Benefits of Carpet Cleaning (Parallel List Items)

How does carpet cleaning help you? A few advantages of carpet cleaning include:

• • Longer-lasting carpet
  • Better health for your family
  • Enhanced room appearance

Benefits of Carpet Cleaning (Non-Parallel List Items)

How does carpet cleaning help you? A few advantages of carpet cleaning include:

• • Your carpet lasts longer.
  • Better health for your family
  • Enhancing the room’s appearance

While readers can get the gist of what you mean in either example, parallel list items allow for quicker scanning and better organization.

6. Don’t Make Long Lists

While you should use lists for presenting a lot of information for quick scanning, if your list starts to be too long, readers might dislike this and skip the list altogether. A good rule of thumb is five list items or less. Additionally, if you have a lot of information, a list might not be suitably long enough. Instead, you can divide your information up into paragraphs separated by standalone subheadings. This format will avoid the long list fatigue yet provide your readers with the information they want in a quick, presentable way.

Help your readers discover your blog’s vital points with the proper formatting tools. Scannable headings, paragraphs, and lists can be successful in helping your blog achieve its goal. Your blog has a lot to offer its readers — simply format it right so they can discover its knowledge!