You need to start chunking
So i’m looking at the Wikipedia article for “chunking” (more on this later) and this is what I find:
Putting aside the likelihood that:
- This is an obscure article,
- Or some other technical hiccup is happening here,
The fact that nobody could find a disadvantage to mention in the past 6 years is remarkable. That means it’s worth knowing about, right?
Chunking is a technique by which information is presented in small, segmented pieces for better reading and comprehension (especially on the internet—and we both know how short attention spans are.)
Most people have chunked before. Your shopping and to-do lists are examples of chunking. If you’ve ever bolded a sentence, you’ve participated in chunking. Wooh!
Whether you have or you haven’t chunked, it’s useful to know how:
Short subheadings
Pretty self explanatory.
Short sentences+paragraphs too. Short is good. Easy to understand. Yes.
Of course, you’ll want to mix it up, at the risk of being mistaken for a poorly programmed robot.
The list
Here’s why you should be using lists:
- They look great on a page 👍.
- They draw visual attention.
- They indicate that there is a relationship between items in the list.
- They aid in scanning text.
- Did I mention how good they look on a page?
The table
The graphic
Besides personal preference, there’s also the fact that trends, patterns and relationships between sets of data are easier to represent pictorially.
—
The Wikipedia page didn’t list any cons, but one did occur to me while I was writing this email-
If someone wants to make their writing as obscure as possible, and make sure that a reader doesn’t find what they’re looking for (i’m looking at you, terms of service agreements) then i’m afraid chunking is just not for them.
See you next time,
Mukundan
