On the ideal length of a blog post

I find it really interesting how my blog posts usually end up being around 1,000 words. Sometimes 900, sometimes 1300. This realisation got me thinking about what the ideal length for a post on the Jolly Teapot should be.

For some reason, one thousand words seems to be my sweet spot. It’s almost like it just happens naturally. Almost. When I first start writing, my drafts usually have about 500 to 700 words. But then, after I edit and try to make sense of everything I previously wrote, the word count goes up to around 1,000. Maybe that is purely coincidental, maybe this is how my brain works.

Or maybe I’m unconsciously aiming for that word count.

For some time now, I’ve done my best to hide the word count of drafts (because it should not matter), but I’m always curious. This curiosity slowly transformed into a signal or goalpost of sorts: If a draft I am working on is under 1000, I feel like I have more to add to it; If it goes north of 1000, I feel like it’s ready to go to editing.

It reminds me of the original idea of MG Siegler’s blog, 500-ish. Most of his early posts were around 500 words, and the blog description still says: “A collection of posts by M.G. Siegler of around 500 words in length.” It is now just in the name I think — I’m not counting words on other people’s blogs — but I’ve always liked the idea of having a typical, regular format.

My blog could be called “1000-ish,” because that’s usually how long my ideas turn out to be once they are ready to fly off the nest. This is a somewhat recent trend though. In the early days of this blog I could write much shorter articles: simple comments on a few ideas or quotes.

These quick and easy-to-produce posts were only about 200 to 300 words, sometimes even less, but they always felt a bit shallow, halfway between a tweet and a full, proper blog post. Even back then I felt that this format wasn’t ideal, as it felt wrong to eventually bring readers onto my site for so little insight. Such a short format could only work if I had been writing 10 to 20 posts a week, but that wasn’t the case, far from it.

These thoughts on the ideal post length also reminded me of what John Gruber once said, I think, on an episode of The Talk Show.¹ I’ve searched for it but I can’t seem to find this episode, which was released maybe 3-4 years ago. If I remember correctly, he was saying that he was fine with really short “link posts” and with really long posts on Daring Fireball.

In the long, proper columns, he felt that he really expressed everything he wanted, while in the short ones, he felt that the quick comment format was a great way to link to something without having to articulate complex ideas. But the posts between something like 400 and 700 words were the ones that he felt were trouble. They were not concise enough to be considered comments, or not detailed enough to convey all he had to say.

I still remember — more or less — him saying something like this, and today it feels more true than ever. When I write around 500 words, it feels like I’m not saying everything I want to say and the post needs more work. If I go beyond that, it usually means I’ve fully expressed my views and I can start editing. But anything shorter just feels too brief for my blog, especially since my homepage only shows summaries and titles, therefore requiring visitors to click on an entry to view the full content. I feel like I need to make it worth their effort to click on an entry.

These days, I seem to be sticking to 1,000-word posts, even though they’re more challenging and time-consuming. That means I don’t publish as many posts in a year. I’m aiming for a pace of one post per week, but I’m closer to a post every ten days. I could definitely write more if the posts were shorter, but this length of 1000 words now feels right. It feels like me.

On the other end, this “format” that I’m now aiming for can also block me from starting to write on certain topics. Sometimes I have a comment to add or a rant to express, but not much more than that, and I know these posts would end up being 400 words or so. This is when I find myself in what I’m now calling “the Gruber dilemma,” and if I don’t feel comfortable writing at least 800-900 words on a topic, I just let the draft die in my “Ideas” folder.²

For example, a few weeks ago, there was this news about how the freshly released Nothing messaging app, which allowed Android phone owners to chat via iMessage, turned out to be a privacy nightmare. I started writing something about it, but then I stopped because I knew it would never reach 1000 words once finished.

This is also why I recently started a new format called “Blends”, where I share 10 links each month with a short comment on each. This format still needs work, but let’s say this is what I would tweet if Twitter was still a thing.

OK, I think I’ve said everything I wanted to say on that topic. How am I doing? Am I close to 1000 words? Look at that: 965 words. That’s a pass; now let’s edit this.