Commercials and social networking sites should be teaching us lessons …#34; in marketing and in writing. So should the fronts of popular magazines.

What do all of these have in common? Their creators know two things:

1) People today lose interest quickly. In this fast food society, we require fast and to the point messages, whether they are in commercials or advice columns. The world is a busy, merry-go-round kind of place, and ideas and articles that do not take that into consideration will be lost to the masses.

2) Viewers and readers like to have their information broken down into pieces and numbered accordingly. They count on the writers and originators feeding them information in small pieces, and love having them summarized in boxes at the side of the commercials or articles.

You only have to pick up a magazine to see that this is true. Every popular magazine today has articles titled, “Six Ways to __________” or “Thirty-six New __________.” Numbers are in almost every title of every magazine on the newsstands. Inside, besides being an article with numbered information, there will be a box at the side of each article, offering a quick summary. Skimming an article is much easier this way, and many people think they are too busy to read entire articles or large chunks of text. Give them what they want. Give them text that reads like sound bites.

Marketers have learned this as well. Articles on every free content web site boast articles with the same kinds of titles. “The Ten Things You Need to Know about ___________” and “Six Lessons I Learned about ___________”. Clicking on such a title will undoubtedly show an article with a list of items relating to the title. Smart marketers will also have a box with a summary in the body of the article.

Years ago, we were told that newspapers were written for the average eighth grader to be able to read. Now, those same newspapers -…#34;especially local ones …#34; gear their writing towards the average sixth grader. Is that because younger persons are reading the newspaper? Of course not. It is because shorter and choppier sentences are more similar to the commercials people watch (or at least listen to) on TV. They are more like the videos that everyone watches on social networking sites. And the businessperson, writer, or marketer who wants to be noticed will learn from this and follow suit.

Is this part of the dumbing down of America? Or is it the result of truly busy lives? It is probably both. But no matter what the reason, the result is the same. In order to be noticed, every writer, businessperson and marketer must learn this new article speak.

While in the past, it was “normal” for an article to require 1,000 to 1,500 words for the message to be received, today’s people want no more than 800 words. They prefer only 600, and often only read the summary.

To get read and noticed today, one must learn to follow the crowd or be left unread. While in the past, creative and different was the requisite, today people want familiar words and phrases.

The writer who refuses to see the writing on the wall (or in the magazine in hand), will go unnoticed. The magazine that doesn’t use snippets and sound bites and numbers will not be the favored one.

And such is life today. It is probably why the same writers now write poetry in addition to prose and non-fiction articles. They still need an outlet for their creative words.

About the Author

Marilyn Mackenzie has been writing about home, family, faith and nature for over 40 years. She is an author on http://www.Writing.Com which is a site for Creative Writers. Her portfolio can be found at http://kenzie.writing.com