I've already mentioned the unfortunate situation where so many sentences are piled together into one single paragraph that it easily ends up having dozens of lines of text! The eyes practically refuse to dissect such a "paragraph"; to extract the meaning, the reader must enforce concentration on each successive phrase with considerable effort. Anyone who spends time at eBay, for example, regularly sees pages where the item description—or the seller's "fine print" relating to shipping method, return policy, etc.—is all but undecipherable because the layout is so difficult to read. The ungainly proportions of the text and images are simply unmanageable.

The reaction of the human eyes and brain to careless line endings in headlines or advertisements is different, but it causes a comparable deficit in the information that's imparted to the reader. Line breaks that destroy the integrity of semantically-related word groups are a cognitive inconvenience—but rather than reflexively skip past the material, the reader's mind stumbles in trying to absorb the meaning of just a few simple words. Consider this example:

Lincoln Heights Little
Miracles Family Daycare

What was your first reaction? I believe that most people instinctively visualize a person's name, "Lincoln Little," and then the term "Miracles Family." It's only after the eyes are confused that one makes a second guess as to what's really going on here!

Now consider this revision:

Lincoln Heights
Little Miracles
Family Daycare

Isn't that better? A simple change can have a profound impact! This time, you get the right idea immediately and seamlessly—no stumbling around, no second guessing, no rethinking. ("Daycare"—as a one-word construction—qualifies as a neologism, but I can let that slide. That's the least problematic thing about this example!)

(back to FAQs)