Writing Effective Paragraphs

My mother is a noted author and scholar of multicultural literature. She has a
Ph.D. in English, when she sits down to write e-mails, theyre written in very long
paragraphs with few breaks, as though they were in essay form. Beautiful letters,
but because of the limitations of the on-screen medium, difficult to read unless
printed out, which sort of defeats the purpose.
I remember learning in school that a paragraph must contain at least four
complete sentences. Of course, formal writing has changed significantly over the
past 30 years, but I believe the point of having at least four sentences has more
to do with the ability to write effectively and clearly than encouraging wordiness
where it isnt necessary. As is exemplified by my mothers writing style, what works
on the printed page may not translate well at all to the electronic environment.
Because of the physical constraints of the computer screen, writing for the Web
has become a study of its own, and while the rules I learned in school all those
years ago may no longer apply specifically, the goals of writing effectively and
clearly do.
The popular term for dealing with text on the Web is called “chunking.” This is
the act of breaking up your information into digestible bits, aiding in the goal of
clarity. Depending upon the voice youre using, and the type of site you have, the
length of your sentences, type of vocabulary you employ, and the length of your
paragraphs are going to vary.

Consider this text example I received from a client.
Here’s a view of the cottonwood trees along the San Pedro River at the Three Links
Farm, north of Benson, Arizona. This place is important to me because it is the first
river I have had a hand in resuscitating. The Nature Conservancy bought this farm
partly because of computer modeling work that I did for them starting in 1996, in
order to retire the irrigation pumping and let the river flow again without interference
from heavy irrigation pumping.
The river flows year round now that the pumps are out of the ground, and we hope
that the flow will continue to increase and benefit several miles of the river downstream
as well. I am planning a drive out there this weekend, to take some pictures
of the rusty old irrigation pumps stacked up in the shed, and give the kids a chance
to mess around with driving a stick shift—super farm roads to drive on.
As you can see, it reads pretty well but its a lot of text without any line breaks.
My “chunking” broke up the paragraphs and ultimately created a more visually
pleasing affect because of the added white space,

Here’s a view of the cottonwood trees along the San Pedro River at the Three Links
Farm, north of Benson, Arizona. This place is important to me because it is the first
river I have had a hand in resuscitating.
The Nature Conservancy bought this farm partly because of computer modeling
work that I did for them starting in 1996, in order to retire the irrigation
pumping and let the river flow again without interference from heavy irrigation
pumping.
The river flows year round now that the pumps are out of the ground, and we hope
that the flow will continue to increase and benefit several miles of the river downstream
as well.