White Space—Your Gandalf at Helm’s Deep
Everyone knows what white space is, even though they may not know its name.
The white space is like the battle for Helm’s Deep in the Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. Helm’s Deep is drenched in dark blackness, the last hopes fading fast when, as a last hope, our warriors look longingly to the east. Suddenly, Gandalf the White rides over the crest of the hill relieving the sure doom. With Gandalf’s help, the edges of black slowly shrink and our fighters are able to press on to the finish.
Gandalf is a designer or writer’s white space. And white space is exactly what it says—it’s white space in and around images or text.
We’ve all ignored emails that were filled with never-ending paragraphs of numbing text clumped together in the middle of the page. It seems to stretch on
and on,
paragraph
after paragraph.
Some of the worst examples are scholarly articles—the kind in in peer reviewed journals (hopefully you didn’t have to read as many of them in college as I did)—and economics textbooks. Those econ professors…
But lets return to happier places.
When we see a big block of text, we are more likely to experience reader fatigue. We cope by exiting the web page or, at the very most, skimming down the page.
So for those of us who write, we have to remember to give our readers enough white space.
You may not spend time writing long articles or blogging, but all of you send emails. Lately, as a team member in a start-up business, (FreelanceInbox.com) I’ve seen a lot of horrible, blocky emails from freelancers—black hole emails that slowly suck your soul like a Harry Potter dementor.
So here’s some email advice:
1. Don’t write more than 3-4 sentences in one paragraph. Find logical paragraph breaks. (Truthfully, you shouldn't write more than 4-5 sentences in the whole email very often.)
2. When possible, use bullets or numbering like this.
3. Keep sentences short. When it comes to business, succinct and to-the-point is best.
Use white space. Do it for those noble Rohans who need you at Helm’s Deep.
