These days, asking for someone’s attention is a tall order, and keeping it is near impossible. Back in the days of newspapers, the contents of the front page were curated with only the most important information. Those strolling by could get a sense of the daily news without unfolding or even picking up the paper. Believe it or not, the power of the fold prevails in the online world, too. 

Below is a heat map showing “57,453 eye tracking fixations across a wide range of pages,” revealing that few viewers make it past the first scroll on a webpage (Schade, 2015). 

To writers in the digital age, these are terrifying results. When we are up against Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, and more than one billion other sites, how on Earth do you keep someone’s attention? 

While it may sound cheesy, William Zinsser advises writers to write for themselves. As the landscape of available content becomes more oversaturated, writers are feeling the urgency of forming their own interesting, never-before-seen, unique style that is bound to gain them an audience. According to Zinsser, this doesn’t work.

These days especially, people are uninterested by the facade of forced stylistic choices that fluff up a piece of writing to be more than it needs to be. Viewers are more likely to continue reading if the writing is genuine, natural, conversational – and to the point. To generate this response, it is important to care about the piece of writing (and what you want to say), not the audience’s opinion.

But how can you simultaneously keep a reader engaged and be carefree about what they think? While it may seem like a paradox, Zinsser asserts that they are “separate processes” (Zinsser, 2013).  

“Writing is an act of ego, and you might as well admit it.”

(Zinsser, 2013)

Writing freely with no bounds is an effective technique to finding your own voice. We often tend to emphasize the importance of editing a piece, cutting it down, editing again, cutting it down again, and so on. However, this process is only worthwhile when the original writing does not lack the human quality that connects us to it. 

Avoid using words that wouldn’t naturally come up in conversation, avoid focusing on weaving your writing around “I” or “we” or “us,” and avoid basking in the pressures of proving that you have something important to say. Fixing technicalities is for the editing process… getting the words out is for you. 

You have a voice – trust it – and someone will care.

References:

Schade, A. (2015, February 1). The Fold Manifesto: Why the page fold still matters. Nielsen Norman Group. Retrieved February 5, 2023, from https://www.nngroup.com/articles/page-fold-manifesto/

Zinsser, W. (2013). On Writing Well. Harper Paperbacks.