


To make things easy for your reader, you’ll switch paragraphs every time you switch speakers, for example: The above paragraph is only six words long, and you can count the words in this one if you like. This is the shortest one so far, and it only uses 37 words. The longest paragraph under this heading is only 61 words long. How many words is that? Again, although it’s not helpful, the answer is “It depends…” Font styles and font size will affect paragraph length – at least from a psychological perspective.įor example, this is a blog post, and I want to keep the reader engaged. People don’t usually like to see paragraphs that are more than three or four lines long. For commercial writing, it’s best to keep sentences short and punchy, and the same goes for paragraphs. “White Space” is a great way to make your information look easier to master, and one of the best ways to create “white space” is through using paragraphs. It looks like it’s going to be difficult to get through, and nobody likes to work harder than they have to. The average person doesn’t like to see solid blocks of text. Whether or not you find it irritating, your task is to hold your readers’ attention and get them to read what you’ve written. Commercial WritingĬommercial writing breaks all the rules. Paragraphs are usually about 100 – 200 words long, but there are more exceptions to this rule-of-thumb than you’d expect.

In general, you’ll have an introductory sentence expressing that idea, and several supporting sentences to round it off. What does a paragraph usually consist of?Ī paragraph usually deals with a single idea. So let’s take a more in-depth look at word count, paragraphs and how it all works. A rule of thumb answer is, “ There are usually 100 to 200 words in a paragraph,” but a more accurate answer would be “It depends…” which isn’t particularly helpful. As a writer, you may find yourself pondering the question, “How many words are in a paragraph?” Much like the number of sentences in a paragraph, there’s no single answer to this question.
