Why You Need Blank Space In Your Writing
I’m not going to claim this is an easy way to increase your readership, but it can certainly help.
Do you remember in English class when you were assigned classics made up of long, barely decipherable paragraphs? Or maybe you took a philosophy class and were forced to wade through page after page of run-on sentences.
(I love you, philosophers, I do, but you need better editors.)
Why are these assignments so grueling? Why do they push away even people who love to read?
It’s because they lack something called blank space.
Blank space, also referred to as white space, is the area of the page not filled with words. As a writer, especially if you’re an overachiever, you might think that packing as much as you can into your paragraphs is the way to keep readers reading.
But this actually isn’t the case.
The brain loves blank space because the absence of content gives it time to process what it just read. It can wrap itself around the single concept before it moves on to the next, and thus understand it better.
This helps build a stronger foundation to grasp the information presented, especially if you’re discussing a complex topic.
