White Space: Easier Said than Done
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White space allows comfortable eye movement around your newsletter, your website, or your brochure. White space keeps your readers reading. But you don't get to white space just by cutting back the word count. The challenge is to present the essence of your message, and this takes some work.
Here's an approach you may find useful:
- Set a total word limit for yourself, perhaps 650 for a brochure
- Limit any sentences to 15 words or less
- Visualize your layout from the beginning: If you are using Word, set up a table on the screen that approximates a brochure, or web page, layout.
- Work within the cells, saving room for graphics and white space.
- Get messy. Don't worry about the words when you start. Let the ideas come.
- Write, then write again, boiling down and down and down.
The more you re-read and re-write, the closer you will come to the essence of your message--and the more white space you will have to ease your reader's eye.
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Keeping up with the Internet:
Blogs Are Everywhere
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Are there really 12 million blogs floating in cyber-space? Read what Wikipedia has to say about blogs.
Question: Are blogs just more chat? Answer: The good ones inform you with an immediacy and intimacy not possible through print media. Just as important, they let you engage in the conversation (when is the last time you did that with your morning paper?). And if done right they are a great form of publicity.
Take a look at these two excellent blogs: Paul Levy on running a hospital Seth Godin on marketing
Alert: Missing Blogs! Home health care: We've got Paul Levy on hospitals, but who is blogging about the fast-growing home health industry? I haven't found a good one yet.
Planning for life after 60: There are plenty of financial planning blogs, but where is the blog that speaks for the whole experience?
Do you have a blog you recommend? Send me your favorites and I'll report on them in the June issue.
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Fountain pens--stopping to think |
As a child I lived in England and learned how to dip a steel-nibbed pen into an ink bottle in my ink-stained desk. And now, here I am sending you an electronic newsletter. What could possibly be the connection? 
A fountain pen, because it moves slowly, causes you to stop and think. I'd argue that there is an element of fountain pen writing in all good writing for the web.
With a pen, you will run out of ink and, eventually, paper. With an e-newsletter or a web page, your space is limited and so is your reader's attention. You're not likely to run out of electricity, but you will quickly use up your reader's interest.
So, you have to stop and think-before you dip your pen in the inkwell, before you press "send."
See you in June.
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