Strategies to Engage Readers

Academics often write a scholarly article as if there is no reader. No audience to consider. Why, then, should it come as a surprise that the average article is only cited once or twice? We’ve all written an article or chapter where there is no indication anyone ever read it.

To be a good writer requires that we have some empathy for our readers and what thickets they are willing to brave. Gaining a reader’s attention requires that we not only consider the words we pick, the density of the sentences we construct, but the form or shape that is created within the confines of the prescribed format of a scholarly article.

Part of an author’s job is to engage the reader. To format a text through devices like headings that make the text less intimidating. To make space for the reader by using short paragraphs and introducing a bulleted or numbered lists that might draw a reader’s attention. The attractive from door that is picking a title that tells it all: the article’s one clear take-away. Figures or tables can provide another way for a reader to skim an article to get a sense of its content.

You are excluding the reader if your text is so dense and technical that there is no means of entry. When there are no headings and subheadings that are sign posts to its meaning. Few readers are willing to tackle a text that is so convoluted that it would require a pick ax and intrepid spelunker to weave your way through it.

Writing an article that attracts a readership is not only about what you say. It is also about how you say. Its appearance matters.

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