Tuto­r­i­al 20: Para­graphs – for­get school English

You were taught in school that a prop­er para­graph had a begin­ning, a mid­dle and an end. It was a self-con­tained idea. And that’s true, when you write a school exam.

Written by
Jerry Huntsinger
Added
February 09, 2019

But in a letter, a paragraph is only a convenient, visual device for making the copy easy to read. Nothing else. You must break up lines of type, prevent eye fatigue, get the reader involved in the copy.

You can keep the reader involved by using several techniques.

Indentation: a letter with all lines flushed left is difficult to read. You always double space between paragraphs to give the reader’s eye a chance to take a breath. But to get the eye moving with the copy, you must indent, so the reader will stay with you.

Break an idea in the middle of a paragraph. Don’t be afraid to go from idea to idea, and build in little cliffhangers.

And, finally, be careful with full stop punctuations! A full stop brings a thought to an end. And that’s what you want to avoid, except when you want to move on to a new thought. At the very least, when you change thoughts, use either a punctuation connector or a word connector.

Usually you end a paragraph with a full stop, unless, of course, it ends with connecting dots (an ellipsis), a colon, or a question mark. And so, when you begin a new paragraph, use a connector or some technique to keep the reader moving forward.

And here’s the bottom line about all this: when a prospective donor gets your mailing package and does you the courtesy of taking the letter out of the envelope, this reader may be talking over his shoulder to his partner, watching headline news out of the corner of his eye, worrying about why the transmission in the car is jumping out of third gear, or in a hurry to take the grandchildren to a roller skating party...

... and if your letter isn’t easy to read and doesn’t flow quickly from thought to thought; and if the reader has to really concentrate to understand what you are saying, you’ve wasted money for your organisation.

If you think your reader is going to sit down and close his mind to all other distractions and concentrate on the contents of your letter you are living in a fantasy world, and you may never write a successful control package for prospecting.

If you feel uncomfortable in this style of writing, for goodness sake, go and find another job. I hope you won’t need to go that far.

Just loosen up. Write the way you talk. Use grammar and punctuation marks as exciting tools.

© SOFII Foundation 2010-2014.

About the author: Jerry Huntsinger

Jerry Huntsinger

Jerry Huntsinger was revered in direct marketing circles as the ‘dean of direct mail’. Many years ago, Jerry gifted his archive of direct mail tutorials to SOFII. All 57 of them are gems. Together, they add up to a complete ‘how-to’ guide that covers everything you need to know about direct mail fundraising. Sadly, Jerry passed away in August 2023. 

These tutorials were edited and presented to SOFII by Gwen Chapman. Gwen is a passionate advocate for donor-centric fundraising. She is a senior consultant with international experience in the non-profit sector in Canada, the United States, the UK and South Africa. She explains the importance of these tutorials here.

A note from SOFII: These tutorials were first published in a different era. They may contain words or themes that today we find inappropriate. SOFII has preserved the copy in our archive, without editing, in order to offer a true representation of the author’s contributions at the time.

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