You lose a tenth of your readers every paragraph. So if you have an 11-para story, you’ve lost them all.

Bob Satchwell, Director of the UK Society of Editors and a former newspaper editor.

Bob says this is received wisdom in the print business. Wonder if it also applies online? Jakob Neilsen thinks it does — he maintains that, for the most part, Web readers won’t scroll down.

Later… Quentin comments: “If you lose a tenth of your readers every paragraph, then perhaps at
the end of 10 paragraphs you still have a third of your readers left, because 0.9 ^ 10 = 0.35. Of course, if it’s a tenth of your initial readers, then you’re in trouble…”