During my travels through the Eastern, Southern and Southwestern U.S. over the past four months, I’ve seen lots of evidence that we’ve all become “scanners” (people who scan instead of reading). Texting is a perfect example, of course. That example can be explained both by the fact that we are pushed for time AND that we like to take shortcuts of effort. (I won’t go so far as to say we are lazy—even though that’s probably the truth in lots of cases.)
Other examples of writing for scanners are abbreviated signs, pictograms, the use of “posts” instead of rambling emails or—heaven forbid—hand-written letters. This world of scanners requires a different kind of writing. That’s not to say we don’t need our full set of traditional writing skills when it’s called for. But we’re acquiring a whole new set of writing skills for scannable writing. Here are a few helpful tips:
- Get to the point quickly. Scanners are looking for the nugget of truth in what you have to say—not just the main point. If you don’t have a nugget of truth to offer, don’t write anything at all.
- Don’t abbreviate everything. Use complete language to give context in the beginning, end and selected parts of a piece that’s long enough to accommodate such traditional language. If you don’t do this, some pieces can become impersonal, and the message suffers.
- Use bold and underline to indicate the most important parts of your messages. A scanner’s eye will stop on the things you’ve marked. One exception is titles. We often scan over titles, taking it for granted that what we read after the title will repeat what’s in the title.
- Include irresistible visuals. A scanner’s mind is programmed for visual clues, so you can draw them in with an interesting visual. It’s an art to choose an image that both tells enough to be interesting and leaves enough out to make them curious—the result is irresistible.
- Keep everything simple and short. That means short sentences, lots of white space, smaller paragraphs and NO unnecessary words. Hint: You rarely need the word “that”, except in instances like the ones above where you are referring to something you just described.
- Don’t try to cram everything into a short format. It’s a mistake to write everything for scanners. Sometimes even scanners need to read a complete message. However, when you do write a longer message, make sure you have something important to offer. If you share something of true value, it’s worth taking the time to read complete thoughts—such as in this very valuable piece of writing about writing effectively for scanners.
About the photo: I took a picture of this floor sign in a McDonald’s restaurant where I was working. In this sign, scanners see the shape and color of the sign first, which tells them it’s a wet floor, because we are used to seeing these wet floor signs. In case we don’t immediately get it, we see a pictogram of a person falling. For good measure, the sign includes a logo. Because it appears on a sign that helps keep customers safe, it communicates a reinforcement of what McDonald’s stands for–caring about our safety. It also reinforces McDonald’s’ reputation for easy-to-access messages and organized management.
