The structure and formatting of text on a page can affect readability. Most readers find formats that have shorter paragraphs and generous use of white space easier to read, and pages of long, densely spaced paragraphs harder to read.

However, the impact of formatting varies with the audience. Those most used to reading newspapers and magazines, which have 1- or 2-sentence paragraphs in columns, will probably find the dense paragraphs of academic and scientific texts unreadable. But researchers may have little difficulty reading such formats.

Explore Structure options to find ways to best structure your text to aid readability.

One way to avoid overwhelming general readers of online information is to introduce a topic with very short sentences. Readers can engage easily with topics presented in a summary format with short sentences and paragraphs, which lead on to fuller information: