The Reader's Brain: How Neuroscience Can Make You a Better Writer by Yellowlees Douglas

Author:Yellowlees Douglas [Douglas, Yellowlees]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2015-06-29T22:00:00+00:00

A good paragraph head, like a soundly constructed paragraph, focuses on a single topic and only on the content of the immediate paragraph. Why? Your readers’ working memory is less like a bottomless pit than it is a shoe-box – our working memories can only hold a limited number of propositions at one time. Stuff more than a single pair of shoes into any shoe-box, and the lid comes off, then the shoes tumble out, a reasonably apt analogy for your readers’ brains when you introduce three propositions crammed into a single paragraph.17 In addition, remember that your paragraph head primes readers for the content to follow and also provides a structure for your readers to hang their inferences on as they work out your paragraph’s meaning. If you mention content that crops up in another paragraph, readers may believe they’ve missed something in the paragraph body.18 As a result, they’ll reread the paragraph head and puzzle anew over the paragraph content. Researchers performed this particular trick in experiments on hapless undergraduates, in which researchers deliberately mismatched introductory sentences and the content that followed them. As a result, students’ reading times increased significantly.19

In short, think of writing a paragraph head as akin to driving. You’re forever looking approximately one to three cars ahead of you, not constructing models of what the traffic and road will look like in a half-mile. At least not if you want to avoid mowing down a few pedestrians and skateboarders in your immediate vicinity.

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