Writing for Somebody Who Reads Forty

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A judge reads many entries in a compressed period, usually alongside their actual work, usually voluntarily. Attention rather than comprehension is the constraint, and writing for it is not a trick. For a practical reference outside the awards context, see the background page.

Where attention actually goes

Highest at the start of a document and at the start of each section.

Lowest at the end of long paragraphs, which is where most entries put their conclusions. Related industry context can be found at The Pulitzer Prizes.

Which means the first sentence of every answer carries disproportionate weight — and putting the answer there is the highest-return edit available.

The six things that help

One. One criterion per section, signposted with the criterion's own words. A judge scoring criterion three should not have to find it.

Two. The answer in the first sentence, with evidence following.

Three. Short paragraphs. Three or four sentences. A dense block is read faster and remembered less.

Four. Figures on their own, not buried in a clause with three others — one number per sentence reads as a fact where four read as an impression.

Five. Plain vocabulary. Internal names, unexplained terms and sector jargon each cost a moment of attention and gain nothing.

Six. Nothing repeated. The same achievement in three sections is one achievement and two wasted answers.

What this is not

Not simplification.

A judge in a specialised category is a specialist, and writing down to them is its own failure. The panel tells you which, and where it is mixed, the plain version serves both.

Not brevity for its own sake either. A section with an eight-hundred-word limit wants a substantial answer, and an entry that is thin everywhere scores as thin.

What is being economised is attention, not length — and a long answer that is easy to follow costs less attention than a short one that is not.

The test

Read the entry as a judge would: quickly, once, looking for the criteria.

Can you find each answer in under ten seconds?

Where you cannot, neither can somebody who did not write it — which is what a second reader confirms and what you can approximate by leaving it three days.

The last thing to remember

Judges are mostly volunteers doing this in evenings.

An entry that respects their time is not merely polite. It scores better, for the reasons above — and the effect is unrecorded anywhere because nobody writes "hard to follow" on a scoring sheet.

They write a lower number instead.

Formatting, where the form allows it

A subheading per criterion, using the criterion's own wording.

A short list where three or four parallel points are being made, which reads faster than the same content in prose.

Bold on the figure, sparingly — one emphasis per section is a signpost and five is noise.

And white space, which most portals strip and some preserve. Check what survives submission by previewing, since an entry formatted carefully and rendered as one block has lost the benefit.

The order of sections

Follow the form, always.

Where the form permits ordering, put the criterion you evidence best first — not because judges score in order, but because a strong opening establishes how carefully the rest was written.

And never reorder to build toward something, which is the narrative failure in another form.

What a tired reader does

Skims for the answer, and where it is not visible, awards the middle of the scale.

Which is the practical cost of a difficult entry: not a bad score, a mediocre one — and mediocre across five criteria loses to good across five.

It also means the loss is invisible in feedback. A judge asked why an entry scored moderately will say the evidence was thin, which may be true and may be that they did not find it.

The entry read last

Somebody reads yours after nine others, and there is nothing to be done about which position you occupy.

What can be done is making it the easy one — which is the whole argument of this page, and it matters most precisely for the reader who has least left to give.

The judge who is enjoying it

Occasionally, and it is worth knowing what produces it.

An entry that is easy to follow, specific, and clearly written by somebody who did the work is a relief in a pile — and relief is not a scoring criterion and does affect how carefully the rest is read.

Which is not a reason to charm. It is a reason to be clear, and the two produce the same document from opposite intentions.

What to do with the first paragraph

Delete it, and see whether anything was lost.

Most opening paragraphs are throat-clearing — context the criterion did not ask for, a restatement of the question, a sentence establishing that the subject matters.

Where deleting it loses nothing, it was costing attention for nothing.

Where it loses something, that something belongs after the answer rather than before it.

Try it on every section. It takes ten minutes and it is the most reliable single cut available.

In one line

Make it the easy one in the pile, which costs nothing and is worth points nobody records.

The short version

• Attention rather than comprehension is the constraint: a judge reads many entries in a compressed period, usually voluntarily
• Attention is highest at the start of a document and of each section, and lowest at the end of long paragraphs
• Six things help: one criterion per section, the answer first, short paragraphs, figures on their own, plain vocabulary, and no repetition
• This is not simplification — a specialist panel is specialist, and writing down to them is its own failure
• What is economised is attention rather than length: a long clear answer costs less than a short unclear one
• Nobody writes "hard to follow" on a scoring sheet; they write a lower number