The communicator’s guide to writing for skimmers

Most employees don’t read your carefully crafted messages. they quickly read messages on their phones and try to empty out their groaning inboxes as fast as possible.

The solution for internal comms pros? Refocus your writing for skimmers.

Sherrie Voss Matthews, manager for growth marketing and CRM at University Health, told Ragan that writing with skimmers in mind has changed her approach to creating sharp comms messaging.

“Think about what your main points are and then write tight,” Voss Matthews said. “Throughout my career, I’ve tried to keep things to bullet points whenever possible, with an introductory sentence or two and then a summary of those key ideas. But the most important part is linking out to more in-depth material for anyone interested, instead of trying to fit everything into one place.”

The formatting is the starting point for Voss Matthews. From there, everything centers on one major question — what if someone only has a few seconds to absorb this message?

1. Start with structure

Most communicators write first and then edit things down later. But Matthews begins with structure first, because that’s what actually catches a skimmer’s eye.

“What I’m really doing upfront is identifying the main points, because that’s what people are going to catch when they scan,” Voss Matthews said. “If those aren’t clear, then the rest of the piece doesn’t really matter. Once I have those defined, it’s much easier to keep everything tight and focused instead of layering in extra context that people aren’t going to read.”

Voss Matthews added that this line of thinking has changed her writing philosophy when she needs to get the message across quickly.

“I used to write really long emails and feature-style pieces where everything lived in one place,” she said. “Now, I’m much more intentional about reducing things down for my audience. Sometimes it’s just a paragraph, a few bullet points and a short conclusion. Then I link out for anything more detailed.”

In practice, that means building your message around three to five key points, and cutting anything that doesn’t help the reader act on them.

Quick check for communicators:

• If it’s not in a bullet, does it change what the reader does?
• If not, cut the material or move it to a link.

2. Tone down the reading level

Once the structure is in place, Voss Matthews makes sure that nothing slows a reader down while they’re skimming, especially the language. She said that she aims to keep the reading level relatively low, but that can be challenging depending on the field you’re working in.

“I’m aiming for a sixth- to eighth-grade level because it simplifies the concepts,” she said. “The words aren’t as difficult to decipher, so it’s easier for skimmers to move through it quickly. A lot of that comes from looking at literacy research and also seeing how people interact with content. If something feels too dense or complicated, they don’t spend time trying to work through it. They just move on.”

In practice, simplifying language for skimmers could look like this:

• Before: “Employees are encouraged to utilize the available resources to complete open enrollment.”
• After: “Use the resources available to finish open enrollment.”

Voss Matthews said she uses editing tools like Hemingway to help her make writing more concise.

“It highlights what might be too complex, so I can go back and simplify it and make it shorter,” she said.

Rules for simplifying your writing:

• Split up long sentences.
• Avoid jargon.
• Replace any words readers might pause on.

3. Choose message length by channel

Once the structure is set and the language is simplified, Voss Matthews makes her final adjustment — tailoring message length to where it lives.

By channel that looks like:

• Email: Short, scannable and focused
• Intranet: Deeper detail

“I would write even shorter for an email versus a website or intranet,” Voss Matthews said. “With a website, I’m assuming they landed there for a reason and want more information. With email, it needs to be super short, with tight bullet points and then a link out if they’re interested. We are assuming we have very short attention spans to work with, and we want to catch their interest and help them dive deeper.”

In Voss Matthews’ view, email is a starting point that:

• Delivers the information quickly.
• Sparks initial interest.
• Sends readers elsewhere for more depth.

“For the emails I’ve been working on lately, we do a short news story with a really great visual and then link to a post that will serve as a landing page for other information so people can do a deeper dive,” Voss Matthews said.

Writing for skimmers is all about figuring out when enough is enough.

“You don’t need to explain everything in one place,” Voss Matthews said. “You just need to give people enough to understand and move forward.”

Sean Devlin is an editor at Ragan Communications.