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| [workers banging money into a surface*] |
Recently, I had a relevant and frank discussion with a forum
administrator about the format of my posts. She suggested with great logic that
my posts would be more effective if they were in “bullet” form, i.e., short
informational sentences. After this conversation, I carefully considered her
comment but nevertheless decided to keep on writing organized paragraph-based
posts I recognize the time advantages of bullet writing but prefer to take
advantage of the power of formal composition to increase retention and develop
complex thoughts.
Clearly, bullet posts are faster in terms of understanding and writing.
To define, their form often resembles this:
3 ways to [fill in]
Intro
1. [fill
in with two sentences]
2. [fill
in with two sentences]
3. [fill
in with two sentences]
Conclusion
The beauty of such a construction is that the reader, even many
non-natives, can finish the whole text within a minute or two and fully
understand the points. In practice, the writer has reduced a complex issue to
an easily digestible dish. Furthermore, the major challenge for the writer of
such posts is identifying the main points, thus rendering the language element into simple, direct sentences whose connections are reflected in the form.
Overall, bullet-style writing seems ideal for busy readers and writers alike.
However, this form often suffers from low retention and lack of depth.
Specifically, many people forget most of the points, not to mention the name of
the writer, within minutes of reading them. As I explain to my students when
teaching writing, in order to retain ideas, the human mind requires repetition.
In simple terms, once is often not enough either for remembering marketing ideas or shopping lists. Furthermore, if carefully considered, most issues have a
certain degree of grey, attenuating conditions if you will. A statement may be
true and appropriate 90% of the time but it is occasionally either or neither
of them. Adding qualifying conditions to the bullet approach reduces its effectiveness
by adding complexity. The lack of repetition and depth are some drawbacks of
this form of writing.
As I write for marketing purposes, which aims for long-term retention
and demonstration of expertise, I prefer formal paragraph-based writing because
it sinks in better, explains more and adds the personality of the writer. The
structure of a paragraph, i.e., topic sentence, details and conclusion,
involves repetition. By reiterating an idea three times before continuing,
paragraphs create deeper images. By writing multiple paragraphs, the author can
discuss all or many of the aspects of a concept, including its limitations and
drawbacks. The information provided is much three-dimensional and applicable. As
a lover of language, I believe that paragraphs allow writers to reflect their
human personality as compared to informational sources. Think of Cyrano de
Bergerac. Readers receive a fuller picture of both the content and the writer.
Granted, paragraph writing is much more demanding both for the reader
and writer. Longer posts often require five minutes or more to read and require
greater attention, especially for non-native speakers. For writers, as the
prose must be interesting or at least encourage the reader to continue, the
writing process is much more demanding in terms of initial time and polishing.
Clearly, writing bullets is much more “user-friendly” than formal composition.
Still, I prefer paragraphs even at that price. For anybody that had the
particular pleasure of reading What is to be done – the burning issues of
our times [shto deletz], a political pamphlet written by Lenin in 1902 (or
any other writing by him for that matter), the unforgiveable aspect of his
writing is the sheer amount of repetition of the same idea, like a jack hammer,
such that every peasant and worker could understand what he wanted to say. I do
not recommend Lenin as a stylistic model, of course. However, if the long-term
goal of writing market content is to be remembered, creative repetition is necessary.
In my view, at least for marketing content, formal paragraphs are more effective
than bullets.
* Picture captions allow the blind to fully access the Internet.
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