Writing Lesson #1: Not “all in one chunk”

Writing Lesson #1: Not “all in one chunk”

Okay, Reader-student (that moniker means I’ve got something important to teach you), roll up your mental sleeves and brace yourself for your first step upon the path of transforming – not just improving, but transforming – how you express yourself in writing.

I have promised to lead you to both greater precision, which implies grammatical and rhetorical correctness, and a more-genuine authenticity, which implies openness of heart and mind, along with confidence. You need to know what you’re doing and know that you know, so you can correctly and confidently say things your way.

After you read, consider, and, at best, practice (even for one day) this very-first lesson of my overall system, your writing will promptly (actually, immediately!) display noticeable improvement. You owe it to your reader to maximize your clarity. And you owe it to yourself to write such that your intended reader will actually read what you’ve written, not just skim over it, as is common nowadays. This “first and foremost” lesson will help you a lot, right away, with both clarity and attention-holding, and it’s not only important, it’s super easy.

A QUIZ — for learning and fun! (not profit!)

But first, I’ve made up a quick pre-quiz to get us started on a path of actual learning. I hope you’re excited to get started. I am! As you will see, I like to use quizzes to add some fun and help introduce our coming topic.

Please know that, to create my quizzes, I use a very low-tech website “plug-in.” It’s one of the only popular ones that do not track or report any data — to anyone. If you enjoyed the quiz and want to share it, you can do that — or not! If so, you’ll see little icons for sharing. But I just want to assure you that Up-Wordz.com does not track reader data, whether or not “users” sign up for an account. That’s not why we’re here.

In fact, until I had to go looking for a quiz-making plug-in — and saw how these work and what they do — I never even considered how “those zany and fun online quizzes” actually serve mainly to gather up your answers, providing yet another way that interested parties can know as much as possible about you.

As you might be noticing, I detest that. This why this site uses no cookies or other tracking, along with no ads. At least that’s my plan, as I work to build up what I envision for this site, most importantly, presenting my three-stage system of activated writing. For now, at least, it’s all free and with nothing being tracked! Yay! And I made sure that my quizzes don’t even have any tracking capability. Maybe you don’t care, but I do.

So try out this quick quiz. I have set it up so that, when you finish and see your results, you can just refresh your screen and take the quiz over again, from scratch, to try again. Let’s see how you do.

Pre-quiz for Writing Lesson #1

If you passed the quiz on the first try, you are definitely off to a great start on this lesson. Read on, to reinforce your good instincts and help turn them into actual habits! I did try to make the quiz items a little tricky, so maybe you missed two or all three.

Regardless of your score, you are about to learn all about this important lesson. For many years, I have presented this concept (if not this newly bolstered write-up) very directly and emphatically as Writing Lesson 1.  Allow me to explain. In just a few minutes, you will — if you cooperate! — become a better writer, quite possibly a much better writer!

(Note: see end of lesson for examples)

Please note, toward the bottom of this post, you can find an extra section called “Lesson 1 Bonus Tracks.” There, you can find a helpful and revealing “before and after” example that I’ve worked up for you, to illustrate the lesson at hand. I‘m going to also paste in some additional social media text, just to show how extremely long some writers can keep running with “one chunk of text.”

If you want to “cheat” and go right to the examples, feel free. (Look, in Bonus Tracks, for a social media post about home power generators.)

Or just keep reading right here. You’ll get to the examples soon enough. Either way, I hope you will enjoy and learn from the following write-up of the easiest way to immediately improve your writing.

When you “get it,” get it ALL

It’s true that some messages work fine appearing in just one “chunk” (that is, “all in one paragraph,” not separate, shorter paragraphs), especially if the message is too short to benefit from dividing up. Take, for example, a text that simply acknowledges, “Got it.” There’s not much to divide up!

Of course, a quick affirmation like that (or even just a thumbs-up icon) can mean a lot to the recipient. Maybe you did not get the message. Until you verify, who knows? I’ll take a thumbs-up over no confirmation at all!

But here’s a warning. Just make sure, before sending the “thumbs-up” that you not only “got it,” you “got all of it!” It’s oh, so easy (and quick) to say “got it,” when we’ve “gotten” about half of it — or not even that! Or worse, we have mis-gotten all of it!

We try so hard to keep our communications super-brief, that it’s tempting to send back the briefest possible reply (if we reply at all). And lots of times, that leads to problems. People don’t always “get” as much as they hastily think they have gotten!

That’s just a little warning about the possible dangers of using, as your primary guideline for your own writing/communication: keep it as short as possible.

I call that a verrrry dangerous stance. Some situations come with important details. Not all “details” can or should be mentioned in any given text or post. But simply aiming for “as short as possible” is not the best way to decide what to leave out — and what to keep in.

And if you do expand your message with certain details or other possibly-helpful info, do not present the whole of it as just one long-ish (or long!) string of text. That is the norm! It’s so easy to do much better than that!

Need reader-friendly bites, not large chunks

Yes, when things seem crystal clear, “got it” can work just fine — and, yes, in just one chunk — as I have acknowledged above. A super-brief message does not require separate paragraphs.

But how long is too long, to come in all in just one chunk? Well, I prefer to be safe rather than sorry. So I say that messages — especially if likely to be read on a phone! — can work okay in one “chunk,” aka paragraph, if the message is composed of one to three fairly short sentences. You can consider this present paragraph about the max, for one chunk of text!

BTW, the paragraph above — just identified as showing “about the max” for one paragraph (especially if it will be read on a phone) — comes in at 73 words. So I will generalize a max word count for a single paragraph at about 75 words — maybe 100, if the writer feels strongly that something will be lost by splitting up the longish paragraph. Please note, I am not recommending 75 words as an average — rather, I’m calling 75 words a (ballpark) maximum.

Shorter — even much shorter — than 75 words can work great, too, especially on a phone.

See what I mean?

Size matters! (esp. in texts)

If you expect your reader to read your message on a larger screen (maybe a laptop) or you will be printing the message, the paragraphs can run longer, without losing significant readability. I am writing this on my laptop right at this moment.

On the other hand, it costs not a penny (good thing, since they’re now disappearing) to break up even a short message. Here’s an example of a short text, shown first as just one paragraph, then broken into shorter parts:

A) Typical text — brief and all in one chunk:

Yes, Sunday afternoon works for me. If you want to meet as early as 11:30, that’s fine, t0o. Just let me know your preference, and I’ll plan for that. Please be sure to confirm our meeting time, and I’ll see you Sunday.

———–

Compare that to the following:

B) Same message text, but broken into mini chunks and also now including a greeting (aka a “salutation”) and sign-off (aka, a “closing”).

Hi Oswaldo.

Yes, Sunday afternoon works for me.

If you want to meet as early as 11:30, that’s fine, t0o. Just let me know your preference, and I’ll plan for that.

Please be sure to confirm our meeting time, and I’ll see you Sunday. — Mike

———–

With such a brief message, we may not gain a lot by breaking it into parts. But the key points do stand out a bit more, as I think you’ll agree the above example shows. I just wanted to demonstrate that even with a message that is not noticeably lengthy, we do get benefits from the shorter paragraphs. (At the end of this post, you can see examples — real life posts — that show the problem at greater “length.”)

Longer texts (or e-mails, especially) do benefit a lot from being split (maybe while proofreading) into “separate paragraphs,” as you can understand, I’m sure. But not too many e-mails (in my experience) come in “all in one chunk.” Some do, but not many.

On the other hand, a serious majority of texts and posts (social media or other) that I see do appear as one, sole, paragraph, sometimes so long that I just have to laugh. That’s probably not what the writer was seeking. I’m saying that the majority of texts and posts you’ll find would benefit from splitting up. Strive to keep your messages pout of that norm!

Would you really sign a text? Maybe.

Also, signing your name at the end of an e-mail, or especially a text, is generally not expected, so that’s totally optional. I do it sometimes. If so, I’ll do it in just the first (maybe second) message in an ongoing thread — and maybe also at the very end. I think the “signature” adds a personalized touch of politeness.

And adding your name there can help avoid embarrassing mistakes, since it minimizes the odd chance of a reply that was intended for someone else. You just reminded the recipient who you are! No, I’m not your doctor who needs to know about the return of your scaly rash. Be careful out there, Reader-student! There’s a lot of bad stuff going around — including lots of bad texting.

Today’s “skinny screens” make things worse

Please note, I have taught this lesson — “Don’t write all in one chunk” — for many years, long before people carried cell phones. Even on full-sized screens, not to mention regular typing paper (!), this rule makes great sense, for reasons I will detail below. But nowadays, “thanks” to the present dominance in our lives of small screens (phones), this lesson takes on even greater importance.

Consider this dramatic reshaping of how we very often read text — any and all text — these days. We’ve gone from a full-sized computer screen — a standard, for decades, that’s not far from the size and shape of a letter-sized sheet of paper — to scrolling along a narrow column of text, barely four or five words per line, and very few lines of type visible at any one moment.

I just tested this fact with a couple paragraphs from this post, and my experiment — comparing this text on my laptop screen to the same text on my phone — about a 3:1 “height” ratio – given my fairly typical device sizes and settings.

So a paragraph (aka “chunk of text”) that stretches across a full-sized screen or page might measure only three inches in height on the screen. At a 3-1 ratio, this text just elongated to a skinny column nine inches long! I’m not a “brain expert” (they come in many forms, these days), but I know, first hand, that long, skinny columns of text impair comprehension — not to matter sheer attention! We start to skim!

You could compare these skinny screens to the columns in a newspaper — but there’s a critical difference. When our eyes look at a page printed in columns, we can see the whole page. We get some perspective and can immediately scan above or below what we’re reading. We can see a lot at once, even as we focus along the lines we’re reading.

In major contrast, as cell-phone readers, we get to view only a tiny amount of text at a time. That’s fine for a brief message of just one or two brief sentences. Sadly (to me), many texters and posters never send a longer message than two or three sentences. If that’s you, I’m glad you’re here.

But on many occasions, you “have” more to say than that, and I want to help you say it, with clarity and in your own authentic voice. Don’t fear showing who you are. Improve your writing, and show off who you are!

We might have more to say than just two sentences, but we don’t want any added info and helpful details (as we might include) to get buried, inside a long “chunk of text” that may have looked fine on a regular screen (or sheet of paper) but will become hard to read when stretched out long and skinny.

It gets worse — a small piece at a time

And, worsening the problem, this “anaconda” of text can be viewed only in small segments, never more than one small piece at a time., as the reader scrolls. So don’t send out anacondas of text!

In fact, you should break up even medium-sized messages. Take care with this (it’s the new you!), and you’ve instantly become a clearer and more effective writer!

I’m not advising you to keep your texts, e-mails, posts, and other writing short and “to the point.” That’s fine in many instances, but in some others, “short and to the point” can lead to catastrophe. We might need certain details, but all we get is “short and to the point.” Then mess-ups happen. I’m not saying keep your messages short — I’m saying keep your paragraphs short!

Got it?

In search of “buried treasure” – inside poor paragraphing

“Buried Treasure”: That’s what I call important info that gets “lost” or “buried” inside long “chunks” of text, because the paragraphs run too long, especially on a small screen. Even on paper, “one-chunk” messages can bury important info, but long, skinny screen columns (as on a phone) greatly worsen the problem.

In other words, inside any detailed message that comes in as one long paragraph, certain important things run a high risk of “disappearing” in the middle. When that happens, we say that the important point “got buried” in the text.

Ironically, the writer cared enough to provide extra details in a longish e-mail or text but did not know enough to put each important detail its own paragraph, to make it stand out, not disappear “somewhere in there.” Take the time and add info that you believe will likely prove useful to your reader — but don’t “bury” these details inside big ol’ nasty chunks of text!

Eureka! Buried treasure found – via the “F&L Rule”

To “unearth” and, better yet, shine a light on (highlight) the “treasure” (the most important info) in your message, you should put to good use what I call the “First and Last Rule” of information arrangement. I don’t mean, by that name, that it’s the only rule. I mean that it calls attention to the parts of a message that come first – or last.

I should note that many sources present this well-known (or at least often-mentioned) principle as the “recency effect” and/or the “primacy effect.” It’s got other names, too, including serial-position effect. But, for my system, I like the name First and Last Rule, for important reasons.

The “F & L Rule”: We best retain the message elements we read or hear first and last in any “message” – including within message parts, such as sentences and paragraphs.

That’s one feature of my rule, as opposed to typical “recency-primacy” understandings. I apply it not just to the whole message (say, an essay or a speech), but, importantly, to all significant sub-parts of the whole, including major “sections” (as headings might announce), the paragraphs that comprise the sections, and even the sentences inside the paragraphs. Yes, even sentences benefit from care taken regarding what comes first — and last.

Applying the rule in your writing

If you present all of your information in one chunk, you get only one first and one “last”! Get it? Per the rule, by any name, those are your strongest allies. Why write all in one chunk and limit your “F&L” resources to the smallest possible number?

If you broke up your longish chunk (with all its important info, aka treasure) into, say, six little paragraphs, you’d gain firsts and lasts for each paragraph, even if it’s just one sentence long, since my rule applies also to sentences, as I’ve noted. It’s just so easy, and now you’d have not just a measly two “hot spots” but 12.

As detailed elsewhere, I love to write communication theory, especially as regards language. You won’t read anywhere else about my “F&L Rule” (until it goes viral, ha ha), especially not its specific writing application, updated, even, for the dominance of e-mails, texts and posts. It’s my theory, especially as just demonstrated,  and I present it authentically, to you, as I strive to practice what I preach.

These days, almost every message you read, especially on phones, violates this simple rule. Look at your own phone to see what I mean. Almost all “messages” to you, whether texts or other posts, come “all in one chunk.” By taking care to rise above that pretty-low “high bar,” starting with this easy technique, you will distinguish yourself as one of those people who care about their writing. It’s a good feeling. And it shows respect — for your reader and for yourself.

So now you have the short version of why to always write in separate and brief paragraphs (especially if it might be read on a phone) instead of the very common form that I detest and revile as “all in one chunk.” The first time you apply this rule, you have already shown yourself a better writer! Word.

 — End of main Lesson —

——————————

Lesson #1 “Bonus Tracks” — including examples

Imagine this: You check your texts on your phone. You see this longish one that came in. Please note that I, as your resident expert, do not automatically judge a longish text or e-mail as any kind of “problem,” as do lesser-trained communication “authorities” (the quote marks to cast doubt on the validity of the enclosed), including abundant lame advice coming from AI, itself.

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 illustrate my point

For some example text, I just now scrolled a bit on a social media site, looking for a post that seemed well-detailed, with several points made – but all in one chunk. In about one minute, I came to a decent example. By two minutes, I found a great example.

These are public posts, not texts nor e-mails, but the principle applies the same way to all three modes of “sending a message.” I won’t name the site, and I have changed a few key words to assure “de-identification” of the author (name deleted), while being careful not to change the word count.

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.

———-

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.

—————–

Okay, Reader-student, see what I mean? The above message, as written, shows a few “issues,” and breaking the one chunk into mini paragraphs can’t fix all of that, but I’ll bet you can see my point about key info not getting missed – not skimmed over, not “buried.”

That’s why I so strongly advise that you present any message of more than three sentences in a set of shortish paragraphs. At best, while proofreading (another shocker!), you might consider revising or even rearranging these paragraphs, for best flow and effect, before hitting send. It’s easy to relocate a point or two around, when they come as separate “units” on your screen (not buried inside of one long chunk). See? And it’s likewise easier for your reader to understand the points, themselves.

On that note, I will end this lesson, except that, just today, I chanced upon an even better example of what not to do — but it’s too lengthy for me to rearrange here. You’ve just seen what that looks like. So I’ll  present it as a “real life” example (with no personal/identifying info in it) of what people who do not understand my Rule #1 think is just fine and dandy.

If you feel like wading through it, go ahead. Something tells me you won’t — which, all the more, proves my point: Don’t write (and post) things “all in one chunk”! People may not even read it.

———————–

Real Life example of an Actual social media post (length = 462 words — yes, all in one chunk!) — (Jan., ’26):

I went though similar with my son. His issues also started when he moved from middle school to high school. There is a great book on the subject but the name escapes me. I have the book somewhere I’ll try to dig it up but the point of the book is that school is so much different than it was when we were kids. Kids today, their anxiety is through the roof. They have to worry about school shootings, we’ve added cyber bullying on top of regular day-to-day bullying, social media often misrepresents real life and kids compare themselves to what they see online. We are experiencing the most politically decisive time of any of our lives. Kids feel that and they experience it as well at school. In high school the clicks are even more pronounced than they were in junior high and kids often echo, without empathy or understanding, their parents politics and beliefs adding to the stressful environment. With my son, I started with the old school approach: you need to roll up your sleeves, buckle down and get it done. All of that BS. Needless to say, that didn’t work. After reading that book I took a more empathetic and compassionate approach. We started seeing doctors and therapists and got him tested revealing very high levels of school anxiety. Then covid happened just as he was making the transition into High School which caused his anxiety to skyrocket. That separation wasn’t healthy. Some kids really withdrew and had a hard time reacclimating to the classroom environment. More and more studies have revealed that our one- size- fits -all method of public education doesn’t really fit “all” and some more creative type kids find it difficult not only to thrive but to simply survive in that environment. After trying to get into remote schooling and finding out that it was filled up (I don’t know how remote School fills up but it does) we opted for the GED. He had a hard time with that at first trying to understand that he would not graduate with some of his friends. However, we came to understand that would be the only way he would graduate. Those are tough decisions to make but on the other side of it he’s in a much better place and I’m in a much better place as a result of his comfort and happiness. To help him with that I shared many examples of people who got their GEDs and have been successful, one of them being a VP at a Fortune 500 company that I know. The stigma of the GED needs to be forgotten. You need to do what’s right for the individual, for the individual’s happiness and for individual definitions of success.