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By Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti

Who am I to speak to the length of paragraphs and the style in which e-books are or should be written? I come with a background in traditional publishing. But I’m also a tech and e-book geek who has taught tech writing, and I’ve written many thousands of words online. So here’s my humble opinion.

I’ve been trying to slog through several e-books online or through PDF files, and I’m finding it very difficult. When I say e-books I mean books written for the Internet, not books that were written for print and then turned over to e-books because there was or is a demand for them and thus they were converted. Such books may still be harder to read online or by a pocket reader or PDA, but they are useful, available for research and much more portable than carrying the book around. Moreover, the authors likely intended the book as paper books, so we can’t really come down on them for paragraph length and so on.

Here instead I speak of the throngs of authors who have decided to go the e-book route, or, who tried the p-book route and got nowhere and so decided to publish their novel as an e-book. What they failed to do before doing this was to tailor the book for the Internet. Make the paragraphs shorter and thus easier on the eye, and the sentences shorter and snappier– again, easier on the eye and easier to read.

Recently, I read what would have made a great p-book–and I’ll leave out the author’s name–which was terrific in print, but failed utterly when I tried to read it in PDF format. In fact, the paragraphs were so long and ran into each other in such long and curious ways that I found my eyes heavy and the self drifting off to sleep even as I tried my hardest to find the enthusiasm I was sure the book warranted.

No question, writing for the Web is different; and authors would do well to remember this when converting what they had planned as a p-book and when that didn’t work out, converted it to a p-book or even vice-versa for that matter. In fact, the only author I can think of who could cross both genres is Marguerite Duras, whose paragraphs are just short enough and whose writing comes in and draws back like the sea lapping the shoreline–an ease of flow.

This is, ideally, what we want when writing for the Internet, an easy sort of read so that our eyes don’t cross as we try to get into a book. After all, what use is the Internet or an e-book if you have to print it out to read it? In the final account we come full circle, converting our e-books finally into p-books, the very thing we had said we were trying to get away from in the first place.

One thing, one of the few books that had originally been a print book that really worked as an e-book was the first version of Alice in Wonderland; and that was Alice’s Adventures Underground (Lewis Carroll) which worked perfectly on my pocket PC or PDA.

Perhaps this was because it is a children’s book, though really, it is a transitional book with great meaning for adults as well as children and if you’ve-read it then you know exactly what I mean. Some books just translate well as both e- and p-book, though this is rare. As I said, Duras would do well as both, but not many can. Poetry too seems perfect for the e-book market and I greatly enjoyed reading Whitman on my PDA

In making my next point, I’ll once again acknowledge that my own writing can be lengthy, though I try hard to keep the sentences brief and the paragraphs brief. And here’s the message:

Keep paragraphs to three to four sentences, or you may risk losing your reader. Really consider why you’re writing the book and be honest with yourself–did you write this intending it as a p-book and then gave up? Or did you write this intended as an e-book?

Whatever the case, the rules are different and you’d do well to note the key differences between the two styles of books: the sentence length, paragraph length, whether or not someone will have to print out your work in order to read it. If so, then in this editor’s view, you have failed, not as an author, but as an author of e-books.

If one has to print an e-book to read a p-book to read it, then it seems to me this utterly defeats the purpose. Just grist for the mill.

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Moderator’s note: Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti is a former publicity director and editor for David R. Godine, Publisher and has worked at Conde Nast Publications, The Atlantic Monthly and others. She has been widely published and now writes regularly for several publications including the famous Cleveland Blogcritics, Geek2Geek, Boston Globe Arts Section, and she has also written for Publisher’s Weekly, Independent Publisher and others. Visit her Web site.

 
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