You can >! CONTROL !< my brain (true story)
File under: Catering to skimmers
9 spots where my attention span is up for easiest grabs
The human eye (i.e., your brain) is a faithless butterfly, flitting quickly from one bigger, briefer, bolder message to the next. The skimming eye doesn't rest for long, jumping from headline to photo to pull quote to offer ... all skimming opportunities.
Take full advantage. There are 9 skimming opportunities on a typical printed page. Digital has maybe more (think links, buttons, sound, video).
Eyebrow (small type above the headline; read by almost everyone)
Headline (the biggest type on the page; read by most everyone)
Deck ("deck" is journalism's term for a secondary headline; decks allow you to unfold more of the story, in semi-big type; decks are read by most everyone)
Caption for photo (read by many; notice we've slipped in some donor love)
Pull quote (read by many; featuring a key message excerpted from the article)
Subheads ~ used to break up the gray mass of the article; subheads send the eye up as well as down; visually, they "chunk" the article and reduce the apparent labor
Sidebar offer: give me something else to do, like watch a related video
Lead sentence (sometimes spelled “lede,” pronounced “leed”; read by many, but readers fall off quickly as the paragraphs plod on)
The article itself, here rendered in “ipsum lorem" gibberish. Ipsum lorem looks like Latin. But it's simply a designer's way of reserving space until the real article arrives. Ipsum lorem helps firm up a word count. ("Dear writer: we can give you about 250 words....") Be pessimistic about readers: few people finish any article. Personally? I assume that 80% of those encountering my articles don’t read much beyond the third paragraph ... so I pack as much allure as I can into the first 50 or so words.
Adapted from the 3rd edition of Making More Money with Donor Newsletters, due out in early 2025 from Hilborn.
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