How to make your writing more visually appealing

Have you ever looked at an email, blog post, website or other piece of writing and had any of the below reactions?

• I just remembered I have to do my dishes.

• Ain’t nobody got time for that.

• Ew.

Most of us feel this way AT LEAST a few times a day, and chances are it’s because the piece of content staring back at you is one big blob of words that looks as appealing as a hill sprint on a scorching hot day. 

You don’t have to be a professional writer to understand that visually appealing content is more likely to be read. And if it’s more likely to be read, it’s more likely to do its job - i.e. give you lots of street cred/recruit you some new customers/make you lots of moolah.

Here’s how you do it:

Make it scannable

No one wants to look at a giant page of words without rhyme or reason.

To make your copy more welcoming, you need to make it scannable. How? By pulling related ideas together using headings, sub headings and bullet points. 

If you’re covering a lot of content, it’s also a good idea to summarise each section with a clear takeaway message. That way readers (even the lazy ones) can quickly scan the content and take away something of value.

Added tip: When sending a group email with important info and actions you want people to take, don’t be afraid to spell this out for them at the end using a sub heading like ‘What you need to do now’ and list the actions as bullet points below. You’ll be amazed at the response.

Vary your sentence structure 

Sentences are your tools, so strap ‘em on your belt and put some intent behind them!

Try to avoid super long sentences and run-on sentences (which are two complete sentences that are squashed together). Instead, try to vary your sentence lengths, which keeps your readers’ eyes engaged.

Remember: sentences of all one length = robotic, monotonous and boring AF to read. 

Also remember: short sentences can be punchy. Super punchy. So use them. 

Give their eyes some lovin’

There are lots of tricks to give your copy some visual spice. Here are some of my faves:

• Bold, italics and underline

• Ampersand (&) and plus (+) rather than ‘and’ 

• Numbers - e.g. ‘5 things you should know about…’

  • Note: writing numbers 1-10 out in full is grammatically correct, but when writing for the web it’s okay to break this rule! The important thing is to be aware you’re breaking the rule & doing it for maximum visual impact

• USE CAPITALS/Use Capitals to really make a point

• Emojis have a time and place – they’re especially great for social media as they help convey tone and can also act as punctuation 🕺

• Parentheses, which are these things (), allow you to add lots of key info (without confusing the reader). 

So there you have it, folks! 

Keep these simple tips in mind when writing something important, and see how readers respond. Chances are, they won’t be rushing off to do their dishes…