3. Create White Space

You’re reading an excerpt of Great Founders Write, by Ben Putano, writer, entrepreneur, and book publisher. He’s the founder of Damn Gravity Media, a publishing house that inspires and educates tomorrow’s great founders. Purchase now for lifetime access to the book and on-demand video course.

In design, what you don’t see is just as important as what you do see.

White space is literally the space in between design elements. It’s a critical piece in good design, and one that takes time to appreciate and master. Young designers often try to fit as much as possible on the page. Experienced designers know that white space is what makes their work stand out.

This principle is just as important in your writing.

Meredith Metsker, a journalist-turned-content marketer for SaaS startups, emphasizes the use of white space in her writing.

“Use the page like a designer uses white space,” said Meredith. “Let your words breathe and stand out.”

White space is an essential counterpart to focal points. Without white space, you’ll have a wall of impenetrable text. Researchers have found that a lack of white space (specifically the use of small margins and tight line spacing) can lower reading comprehension. If you need proof of this for yourself, just try reading a research paper in an academic journal—most will make your eyes bleed.

Creating white space starts with your sentences and paragraphs. Keep your paragraphs short—typically no more than three sentences.

And dare to use single-sentence paragraphs to break up the monotony.

Next, use bulleted lists whenever possible. These create blocks of lateral white space that give your writing a nice shape.

Finally, take time to develop the right message so that you can say less.

Improve Your Emails with White Space

White space is especially important in emails, which is where you’ll probably conduct the majority of your writing. White space makes emails more clear, focused, and effective.

In my opinion, no one writes a more clear and effective email than Trish Bertuzzi. Trish is the author of The Sales Development Playbook. She’s mastered the art of writing sales emails that convert. White space is a fundamental element of her success.

Trish is a proponent of short emails that take the shape of a capital F.

The first paragraph is the longest, and they get shorter and shorter down the email. This pattern creates a natural “funnel” design—a clear direction for the reader.

Here’s an example of a sales email I used when building WeContent, my content marketing agency:

Hey Lauren,

I really liked [Company]’s blog post on switching big data platforms from Amazon AWS to Snowflake. But I noticed it’s the only article you’ve written this quarter.

Did you know companies that publish more than one blog post per week see a 10X the return on their content marketing efforts?

We help companies like [Company] publish more content for a flat fee.

If interested, let’s talk. Here’s my calendar link.

Cheers,

Ben Putano

Notice this message has more white space around the call-t0-action at the end of the email. My goal is to funnel attention to the calendar link. This email performed very well for me (and led to the training debacle I shared in Chapter 4).