Source

Writing for Busy Readers

Todd Rogers and Jessica Lasky-Fink

Todd Rogers's book on writing messages that busy, skimming readers will actually read and act on. Source for Episode 177's Message Brevity Effect — fewer words, fewer ideas, fewer requests — including the school-board email study, the journalist-newsletter halving study, and the political-donor paragraph-deletion study.

Episode 185 extends the same material with the Purple Wi-Fi terms-and-conditions stunt, the period-pause eye-tracking effect, and studies on complex language, reader-perspective framing, formatting, messenger authority, and physical mail.

Discussed in

  • Episode 177 — 177-the-overlooked-secret-to-better-writing
  • Episode 185 — 185-how-22-000-were-persuaded-to-clean-sewage

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