: Do 'text walls' scare off readers? A comment on a recent question of mine claims Right, so that's [large unformatted text blocks scaring off some readers in certain contexts is] a myth.

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I'll say it's NOT just about formatting. Yes, solid set text (no extra leading, paragraph breaks, or short lines) is uninviting. But what's really a problem is written monotony -- long monologues, lack of rhythmic changes in wording, long paragraphs full of dense sentences, dialog that reads like writing rather than speaking, and descriptions that devolve into tedium.

Visually, yes, text without paragraph breaks or dialog looks uninviting. But writing can be bad and uninteresting even if there are paragraph breaks and quote marks.

Classic example: Atlas Shrugged. I counted one speech (a character speaking) that went on without any interruption for 21 pages. I might be wrong. It might have been 40 pages. Rand wasn't a novelist, she was a messianic lecturer, and that's why she had her "characters" pontificate for page after page after page, and then more pages. The whole thing is a boring wall of text. And yet, some people, mostly teenage boys and men who still think like teenage boys, think it's a fantastic novel (its main message, if you haven't been subjected to it, is "be selfish" -- so it's hard to see why it's popular with adolescent males).

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The quote claims a lot of text is no bad thing if formatted and structured properly. "Wall of Text" refers to lack of formatting and structure, albeit a less common alternative definition (which is not relevant in this context) seems to exist. The quote and the generic advice to avoid Walls of Text are in agreement. This answer demonstrates that presentation isn't as relevant if the text is sufficiently brief.

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Who wants to waste time on bad content?
Regular consumers learn heuristics based on prior consumption. For example, you probably enjoy the sight of your favorite food because you've had it before and know that it's good.
Readers are content consumers. After having consumed tons of content, they've acquired heuristics for estimating the quality of content before investing the effort to consume it.
And text walls stink
Walls of text have a horrible stench. They invoke memories of pointless rants, poorly formed reasoning, and unorganized trains of thought. I'd guess that most of us read text walls at first when we were young, but after each bad experience, we became less and less inclined 'til we stop reading them altogether.
So, yes, text walls will drive away users. They're not really scared so much as they have better things to do. The internet has no shortage of stuff to read; why waste time on something that, based on experience, seems likely to be of lower quality?

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I take this concept to the extreme .. and I think it may be due to some sort of condition ... my motivations have always been to keep things conversational and easy to read.

If I'm personally accomplishing that goal, I'm sure opinion differs greatly on that one.

I don't know if this question tricked my mind into creating "imaginary walls", and thinking a lot of the answers and even the question looking "blockish."

I think walls of text ARE DEFINITELY "a thing", and it should be mentioned that character / font / font size / line width / line spacing can also create these walls ... combined of course with the number of lines in paragraphs.

Most of my context is non-fiction, and it's a lot harder to keep people engaged when you cannot make things up haha. So these "walls" become even more apparent.

And some of my non-fiction is training and some of it marketing and sales. The medium and context also play a part how text is formatted and structured.

THE FLOW, so to speak :)

One marketing "cheat" we love to use is to survey your audience, using a free survey service like survey monkey. Not sure if that is a possibility, but hearing from your readers will get it straight for the horses' mouth.

If you go that route, bribe them with a free ebook or something to force their hands into responding, muhahaha.

Uh oh, are these paragraphs too long?!

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There are two kinds of density of text. It is common to find one author (e.g. Karl Marx) writing text that is dense in both senses, but let's tease the two types apart:

One way of making text dense is to write long, convoluted sentences that the reader has to go back over one or more times to figure out.
Another way is to have long paragraphs, perhaps spanning more than one page!

The extreme opposite to density type #2 is the bulleted list -- think of how text is laid out in how-to books such as ____ for Idiots.

I have proposed an edit to your question that shows how I edit papers in the social sciences. I try to honor the idea the author is trying to get across, but make it so the reader can "get" it on the first pass. I think that comparing your original version and the edited version may make it easier for you to understand what I'm saying about convoluted sentences.

Original:

This is surprising to me as I have had requests from multiple people throughout my life who seem quite interested in the content of something (short and non-fictional) I've written that I avoid text walls in the future as, while the various things were not problematic to read once they began, they significantly delayed reading it because of the (lack of) formatting and the correlated perceived density of the text.

Edited:

This was surprising to read. Multiple people throughout my life who've been quite interested in the content of short, nonfiction pieces I've written have requested that I avoid 'walls of text' in the future. While the density on the page was not problematic for them once they actually read the piece, they had significantly delayed reading it because of the lack of paragraphing and other formatting.

My editor (my spouse) has helped me shorten and simplify my sentences over the years, without sacrificing the complexity of my ideas by telling me regularly, "Think Hemingway."

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Harry Potter is not a wall of text. It uses line breaks, paragraphs, headings and chapters. That’s the opposite of a "wall of text", which simply means "a lot of text without formatting, line breaks, paragraphs or any typesetting whatsoever".

As long as you properly format your answers, long answers are not bad in any form.

Start with a short summary of your answer - bring the main point across in the first paragraph. Then use subsequent paragraphs to elaborate on that. Finish with a conclusion that brings you back to the start.
Use formatting where appropriate. Do not overuse bolding. Split your text in paragraphs. Use headlines or taglines where appropriate.

If you do all of the above, your answer will not be a wall of text. It will be easy to follow. People will be able to read your introduction and can then decide wether they will embark on reading further (through the parts of your answer where you elaborate) or if your answer doesn't apply / doesn't interest them.

For comparsion, this is my own answer as a wall of text:

Harry Potter is not a wall of text. It uses line breaks, paragraphs, headings and chapters. That’s the opposite of a "wall of text", which simply means "a lot of text without formatting, line breaks, paragraphs or any typesetting whatsoever". As long as you properly format your answers, long answers are not bad in any form. Start with a short summary of your answer - bring the main point across in the first paragraph. Then use subsequent paragraphs to elaborate on that. Finish with a conclusion that brings you back to the start. Use formatting where appropriate. Do not overuse bolding. Split your text in paragraphs. Use headlines or taglines where appropriate.If you do all of the above, your answer will not be a wall of text. It will be easy to follow. People will be able to read your introduction and can then decide wether they will embark on reading further (through the parts of your answer where you elaborate) or if your answer doesn't apply / doesn't interest them.

As you can see, it’s much harder to read when not properly formatted. That’s what people critizise when they complain about "walls of text" (at least in the context of internet platforms).

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The key word is unformatted. Harry Potter is a set of novels which have paragraphs, reported speech broken out into lines and so on - the normal readability aids. I also note that the Harry Potter books get thicker as the series goes on; it might not have taken off if the first book was Order of the Phoenix.

The "wall of text" is much less of an issue in book format than on screens, so long as the text has pagination and is a reasonable size. If you fill an A4 page with unformatted 6 point text nobody is going to read that either.

This is slightly separate from what's called an "infodump", which is a chunk of background material that neither involves characters nor advances the plot.

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I believe text-walls are highly subjective.

One general definition calls it a large amount of text without breaks. But what is large? I'm quite certain that what a 19th century reader considered an average paragraph is often considered large today. On the other hand, one must consider the medium. What one considers a large paragraph online is very often acceptable on paper.

I once read a blog entry (which I've failed to track down) from a university teacher (American, if memory serves me right). He claimed that the more time he spent online, the less patience he had for long chunks of text. There is also a wide controversy about attention span and the nefarious (or not) effects of the digital world. There was even a claim that people's attention span had fallen below the attention span of a fish.

Personally I have noticed that, since I've started reading online news that favour extremely short paragraphs (think 1-2 sentences per paragraph), I have indeed become impatient with traditional paragraphs on news articles. Once I went so far as to think "ugh, wall of text". But in fact, it wasn't; it was a well thought out text with far more information than what I'd been reading.

On the other hand, I accept rather long paragraphs in a book without any problems for as long as each one is a well-thought out unit.

This seems to imply that the length of what one usually reads dictates what one considers appealing or boring (in terms of length).

Bottom line: text-walls do exist. Text-walls will make a reader tune out and lose interest (though I wouldn't say it'll scare them). What leads a person to consider a given text a text-wall is subjective.

To avoid the problem, consider:

the medium (online begs for shorter paragraphs),
the target-reader (book readers may have a longer definition of paragraph than people who read mostly online or who dislike reading, whether those paragraphs are online or not)
the aim (to transmit specific information, a preferance for bullet points and naked, lonely facts is preferable; to create a more, let's call it rounded or contextualised information, go with more a traditional textual approach).

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