. . . continuation of “Lesson 1 – Narrative version”
Indeed, many e-mails are “properly” kept short (“just the essential facts!”) – so short, in fact, that they make work for the reader to track down relevant details that should have been there and would have helped. Anyway, you get this detailed text, and you can live with that. But, yuck – it’s not only longish (or just, plain long!) and quite detailed, it comes all in one (long) chunk.
What a pain. So you start skimming. And stuff gets skipped over. I hope it’s not the most important stuff. As a theorist, teacher, and critic of communication, I don’t place the blame on you for skimming, even if real-world, material problems occur because you missed important information. I blame the person who sent the message “all in one chunk.”
What a recipe for futility, considering that the writer must have cared about the matter at hand, to be writing at all. But most people just type (or speak-to-text) away, all in one chunk, and the various information chunks “land” in the message wherever they might happen to come out during the writing or speaking. And key information thusly gets buried, as the long, single chunk wanders along – and then gets hastily sent.
Newspapers use columns, about four to six per page, for many logistical reasons. That works fine on a large printed page, which readers can hold in their hands, able to scan the whole page at once.
But skinny columns with only three or four inches ever viewable at once (“scroll, scroll, scroll your phone”) present serious challenges to reader comprehension. It’s like watching a parade go by through a hole in a fence. You see everything that goes by, but never more than one float at a time. It’s not the same.
An example to show (and prove) my point
For some text to use as an example for you, I just now scrolled a bit on a social media site, looking for a post longer than most but all in one chunk. In about one minute, I came to a decent example. By two minutes, I found a very workable example.
These are public posts, not texts nor e-mails, but the F&L principle applies the same way to all three modes of “sending a message.” I won’t name the site, and the message (author deleted) holds no personal information whatsoever. Despite my purposes right now, I love to read helpful posts like this.
So first, read the post as it came, in one chunk, and try to fight the urge to skim. The urge may win, but that’s only natural. If the topic already interests you, you’ll be less tempted. Plus, it’s not all that long. I’ve seen them on this site four times as long, but I wanted to keep things realistic.
Then read the same text broken into smaller paragraphs. Even without a research approach (say, recall tests given after the two readings), you will surely see the difference for yourself. And you won’t miss key info, since you will likely not lapse into skimming. See for yourself.
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All in one chunk:
It looks like we are going to be seeing mandatory brownouts on a regular basis. With that in mind it seems prudent to invest in either a whole house fixed generator, like Generac, or a quality portable like a 30 or 50 amp unit. The fixed whole house generators are expensive and not for everyone. A quality 30 or 50 amp portable can be purchased form around 800 to 2000, and with a power inlet box and mechanical interlock switch, you can run most everything in your home as well for a lot less than a fixed unit. Only difference is you have to manually hook up the generator every time you need it. Some of these portables are also capable of running on 3 types of fuel, gasoline, natural gas and propane, which gives you more options than the fixed units. So if a fixed unit is not an option, consider a portable setup, this will make the whole ordeal a breeze.
In separate paragraphs:
It looks like we are going to be seeing mandatory brownouts on a regular basis.
With that in mind it seems prudent to invest in either a whole house fixed generator, like Generac, or a quality portable like a 30 or 50 amp unit.
The fixed whole house generators are expensive and not for everyone. A quality 30 or 50 amp portable can be purchased form around 800 to 2000, and with a power inlet box and mechanical interlock switch, you can run most everything in your home as well for a lot less than a fixed unit.
Only difference is you have to manually hook up the generator every time you need it.
Some of these portables are also capable of running on 3 types of fuel, gasoline, natural gas and propane, which gives you more options than the fixed units.
So if a fixed unit is not an option, consider a portable setup, this will make the whole ordeal a breeze.
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See what I mean? The message has a few “issues,” and breaking the one chunk into minis can’t fix all of that, but I would think you can see my point about key info not getting missed – not skimmed over, not buried.
I advise that you present any message of more than three sentences in a set of shortish paragraphs. At best, while proofreading (another shocker, to many) consider revising or even rearranging these paragraphs, for best flow and effect, before hitting send.