The "running on" never ending Paragraph...

Ezzy

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Inspired by Tireless Tongue's "Spelling and Typos" thread.

You can get caught by the “running on” paragraph just about anywhere, I have seen item descriptions for real-estate properties, that are three quarters of a page (A4 or Legal pad), single space, using a small font (an eight or a seven), that from more than a foot away look as if the ink was simply thrown at the page.

It may save you paying that extra hundred or a hundred and fifty dollars for the advertisement, but a shorter description with a bigger font would bring you many more phone calls from those who did not need to use a magnifying glass to read it as well those who do.

Once that item listing didn’t sell in a reasonable amount of time, you can guess what they did can’t you? That’s right, they added another running on paragraph to the listing making it even worse.

I have offered edited versions of this sort of “running on” description, back to sellers at no charge (for the edit}, just to get listings changed, you will be surprised how many get quick sales, once their long-winded descriptions have been winnowed down to two or three succinct paragraphs.

As I make commissions on the sales I am helping myself at the same time, so I’m not doing it just for altruistic purposes. My non-professional partner often lets the non-professional sellers pay their money for their listings using their verbiage, and he does it for one of two reasons: -1) They insist that they want their words used. 2) They don’t listen when he tells them, we can do a better job with fewer words, at a lower cost.

If they still insist that they want a full description, he takes down their description and charges them our “by the word” price. They will check out the advertisement and seem to think they are getting good value for money, as what they had asked to be included is all there. Three or four weeks later, I will offer a trimmed down version, and they will often sell it to the first caller for their asking price.

So does anyone have any ideas why people think like that, or even want that?
 
Some people never paid attention in school when they were taught how to write properly. In their minds, it's possible that one huge, run-on paragraph looks neater to them.

Take posts on Lit, for example. So many people seem to think that one paragraph is suitable for a post, if what they're writing about is generally all about the same topic. They don't realize that the human brain processes the information so much better if there are breaks in between - people like to be able to read four to five sentences at a time, and then read another set, and so on.

Marketing isn't everyone's forte. Some people and companies will take a cheaper=better approach to it, regardless of their results in sales. It's only the smart ones that figure out the relationship between advertising price, quality, and resulting sales.
 
Some of the stories posted here on lit are much the same way.

Drives me crazy to see dialouge thrown in the middle of a long running paragraph. But, in some people's defenses, many school systems aren't teaching kids how to seperate into paragraphs these days.

I learned how in TX but I've friends from CA who it pains me to read what they've written because they don't seperate dialouge so its all one long run on paragraph from heck.

Smaller paragraphs are more appealing and easier to read. The run on from heck is not.
 
Lynxie said:
Some people never paid attention in school when they were taught how to write properly. In their minds, it's possible that one huge, run-on paragraph looks neater to them.

Take posts on Lit, for example. So many people seem to think that one paragraph is suitable for a post, if what they're writing about is generally all about the same topic. They don't realize that the human brain processes the information so much better if there are breaks in between - people like to be able to read four to five sentences at a time, and then read another set, and so on.

Marketing isn't everyone's forte. Some people and companies will take a cheaper=better approach to it, regardless of their results in sales. It's only the smart ones that figure out the relationship between advertising price, quality, and resulting sales.

Thanks for your balanced answer, the laugh for us though is that the price we charge for the "say what you want" advert, is higher than a guided advert...The simple reason for this is, that we know you are not going to make a sale on 99.9% of the "say what you want" advertisements, so our company rule is to charge a higher price for the ad'.

The higher price also helps when we inform advertisers that we can help them, though we have had one in the last three years, who not only re-upped his advertisement in size, but he also managed to get a sale, whoever it was sold to did negotiate a 20% reduction in the price that hit us in the pocket though.
 
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