8 Pointers To Better and Prettier Article Formatting

Blogging is a business of many aspects. You need to write quality content, promote your content on social media, network with fellow bloggers and if you are interested in monetizing your blog, you need to find advertisers for your blog as well.

If you have your visitors on your blog, you want to keep them and let them browse around. You can do that by improving your blog design. That’s not today’s subject, we will improve the look and feel of your article.

Most important part you should learn from today’s topic is that you keep your reader focused on your content. They shouldn’t be bored.

Make your article look nice too. Photo by Araswami

1. Strong, Italic and Colors

One of the most important parts of webdesign or blog design is contrast. With a proper use of contrast you can draw attention to the parts you want your visitors to see (for example advertisements or your RSS link).

To make certain sentences or words stand out from the rest of your paragraph and content, we can use strong, italic or text with a color.

2. Paragraphs

As we have discussed before, the paragraph is a very important part of your content. The whole article visitors are reading is build on paragraphs.

The important part of your paragraph is that they shouldn’t bore your visitors. If people don’t like how the letters and words “flows” or “feels” they might skip that paragraph, or in the worst case move on and click the exit button. I suggest you read some tips for styling the paragraph.

You also have to make sure you don’t write paragraphs that are too long. You have to keep the attention on what is important. Usually I keep my paragraphs around 4, 5 or maybe 6 sentences, because that is the length myself am most comfortable with.

Paragraphs that are 10+ sentences “feel” like though and hard-to-understand content while if you keep your sentences shorter, it doesn’t feel like that and your visitors read the same amount of text.

3. Images

You are looking, right? photo by Kamoteus.

Using images in your article can make your post easier to read and scan and make it looks nicer. For example, if you align an image inside a paragraph you rebut the focus from the paragraph to the related image.

And if you use an image you should consider adding a caption below to explain what the readers are seeing. That makes it easier to connect the image to the content and that might help the reader to better understand everything that has been said.

4. Whitespace

Whitespace is the most underestimated part of webdesign and that while it has great power: it can make or break a design.

With whitespace you can make the content feel less cluttered and comfortable on the eyes. A very “busy” layout is less easier to read then a layout that adds enough space between elements. I suggest you read this article by A List Apart about whitespace.

5. Titles

Did you take a look at this article? It is separated in chapters, and all these chapters have a title that stands out and makes a structured article. With one fast look your visitor you can see what each chapter is about.

You can achieve a title that works by making the size larger, bolder and you could also add a color. You have to make your title stand out.

Smaller Tips

6. Lists – Organized data is very easy to read for your readers. With lists you can structure information and you can make it look good too.

7. Links – Make it easy for your visitors to see what are links and what are not. Do you remember those default colors? Why do you think the were styled with the colors blue, purple and red? People recognize them as links. You can use some other colors and styles, but remember to let them stand out from the surrounding.

8. Backgrounds – Another way to make some part of your post stand out from the rest. For example, if you have quoted someone you could make visitors look at it by adding a slight darker or lighter color (depending on your layout style).

Important notes

This article is all based on my experience on the web and how I read articles online. Everyone could have their slightly different ways and views and therefore everyone should be able to create an “article-design” that you prefer.

If you follow the basic rules or pointers given in this article you can produce a nice and structured article. Just remember you shouldn’t overdo certain things. Using bold sentences or colors will lower the effect we have been talking about.