What's notable to me about this advice—“People scan online. They’re impatient. You can’t indulge yourself with long ass paragraphs and flowery stuff”—is that it's assumed to be true without any real justification. It might in fact be true for most readers, but someone could just as easily then make a commercial argument that longer, flowery paragraphs are the best way to reach an unreachable audience—because so few people write that way online. Completely forgetting any artistic impulse, I wouldn't want to compete against the countless writers striving to reach short attention spans. This seems like a difficult game and one that's quite crowded. I would add that this copy writer also revealed an assumption with the word 'indulge'. A single sentence could fit the description of being indulgent if it's gratuitous, while a lengthy paragraph could feel, sentence by sentence, as absolutely necessary. Thank you for the thoughtful comment, John.
What's notable to me about this advice—“People scan online. They’re impatient. You can’t indulge yourself with long ass paragraphs and flowery stuff”—is that it's assumed to be true without any real justification. It might in fact be true for most readers, but someone could just as easily then make a commercial argument that longer, flowery paragraphs are the best way to reach an unreachable audience—because so few people write that way online. Completely forgetting any artistic impulse, I wouldn't want to compete against the countless writers striving to reach short attention spans. This seems like a difficult game and one that's quite crowded. I would add that this copy writer also revealed an assumption with the word 'indulge'. A single sentence could fit the description of being indulgent if it's gratuitous, while a lengthy paragraph could feel, sentence by sentence, as absolutely necessary. Thank you for the thoughtful comment, John.