This isn’t a licence to chuck out long-form content altogether - in fact, long-form content tends to be preferred by people and search engines - but the sweet spot is conciseness, not brevity. (I mean, I can barely get to the end of a sentence without having to re-read the beginning.) But our attention spans are short, especially when we’re online, reading a screen or distracted. Granted, adults understand more words than children. Writing this way also helps to nudge the kids towards finishing the story and understanding its messages. The flowing, rhyming prose was an immediate hit with his target audience, and has remained so since 1957 with 250 million copies sold to date.īecause children have a more limited vocabulary than adults, children’s authors use simple words and short sentences. Take Dr Seuss. Challenged by his Random House publisher Bennett Cerf to limit the vocabulary of The Cat in the Hat to 225 words, Seuss picked 223 words from a list of 348 Grade 1 target words, and added 13 words that were not on the list. Children’s books have a lot to teach us - thought leaders, communicators, content marketers and salespeople - about what works and what doesn’t.
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