I'm glad that many people are choosing to write long form nowadays, whether on Facebook or on their blogs. This is great. If anything, I wish people would write more.
I'm always on the lookout for something to read, but I am very finicky about what I let in.
Garbage in, garbage out, ika nga nila.
If I flood my feed and my head with bad writing, sloppy thinking, and walls of text, it will eventually show up in how I think and how I write.
Part of my intention here is selfish, and honest: I filter what I read because I don't want it corrupting my head.
Before I begin, let me say this clearly: I am fully aware of the length of my own articles. I know they run long.
That is exactly why I format them carefully, so they are easier on the eyes, especially on a phone.
I study how people read, how their eyes move when they scroll on a smartphone, where they pause, where they bounce out.
My blogs on Facebook are designed for that small screen; the problem is they sometimes turn into a wall of text when opened in a browser.
Then again, around 80% of my readers are on their phones, so that’s who I design for.
If most of your readers are on their phones too, write and edit on your phone at least once; if you get tired looking at your own post, so will they.
I’m not just trying to get more readers. I’m trying to help create more writers who respect their audience and understand how reading actually works on a tiny screen.
So if you are one of those who are starting to write, let me share a few practical tips on blogging, so people will actually read what you write.
YOUR READER IS DOING YOU A FAVOR
Before anything else, get this into your head: your reader owes you nothing.
They are busy. They are tired. They are scrolling through a feed full of noise, and they are choosing, in this moment, to give you their attention.
As a blogger, that’s a gift I cherish.
And the fastest way to return that gift with an insult is to make them work to understand you.
Readers quit when text feels like a wall. If they see unbroken blocks, or if the words are beyond their reach, most of them leave before reading a single sentence.
You have maybe three seconds to convince them to stay.
Three seconds.
THE ONE RULE THAT CHANGES EVERYTHING
Break. Your. Paragraphs.
I'm serious.
This alone will make your writing much more readable on a screen.
Shorter paragraphs help people process content faster and feel less intimidated by the page.
Two to three sentences per paragraph.
Sometimes one. For impact. For effect.
One sentence can carry more weight than a paragraph that runs six lines. But only if you let it breathe.
Kung hindi ka marunong mag-break ng paragraph, the layout itself is already telling your reader: this will be hard. And hard is the one thing people avoid when they're reading for free.
SHORT SENTENCES ARE NOT A SIGN OF WEAKNESS
I often see long-form posts where the ideas are strong but trapped in sentences that try to carry four thoughts at once.
Compound and complex sentences are tools for academic papers.
They exist to compress a lot of information for readers who already agreed to work for understanding.
In that context, people expect to sit down, concentrate, and decode.
A blog is not an academic paper.
Your reader did not sign up for a thesis.
They want to know what you think, fast, in a voice that feels like a conversation.
One idea. One sentence.
Then the next one.
DICTION IS NOT ABOUT VOCABULARY SIZE
A lot of new writers equate “smart” with “complicated.”
They reach for the biggest possible word when a simple one would do.
They stack adjectives. They use theoretical terms when a plain Filipino or English word could carry the same point with more force.
Ganyan ako magsulat dati. Trying to impress kasi.
Good diction in blogging is about choosing the word your reader already has in their head.
The word that arrives before they finish reading the sentence.
When you choose the fancy synonym over the common word, you are prioritizing how smart you sound over whether you're being understood.
Iyan ang problema.
You want your reader thinking about your idea. Not looking up your vocabulary.
If you can’t avoid using a “big” word, then parenthetically define it or give proper context.
Tip: do it but don’t overdo it.
FORMAT IS AN ARGUMENT
This is the part people skip, and it's the part that kills good writing.
Headings. Paragraph breaks. White space. These are not decorations. They are signals to your reader about how to process what you're saying.
When you use a heading, you are saying: here is a new idea, here is where it starts.
When you break a paragraph, you're saying: pause, let that land, now here comes the next thing. When you write one sentence as its own paragraph, you're saying: this. Right here. This is the point.
Format tells a story before the words do.
If your formatting looks chaotic or doesn't exist at all, your reader reads that first and makes a decision. Usually the wrong one for you.
HEADINGS HAVE A HIERARCHY, USE IT
Not all headings are equal. H1 is your title. There is only one. It's the name of the piece.
H2 is a major section. Think of it as a chapter. It tells the reader: we are now talking about something new.
H3 lives inside an H2. It's a sub-point, a breakdown, a smaller idea that belongs to the bigger one above it. You don't need H3 often in a blog. If you're using it every other paragraph, you're probably over-organizing.
Most blogs only need H1 and H2.
Now, platform matters.
On Facebook, you don’t have real heading styles in a normal post, so capitalization and emojis become your manual way of signalling hierarchy:
- a line in all caps with an emoji feels like a section break because the platform doesn’t give you proper H1 or H2 tools.
On WordPress, Blogger, Hostinger, and other blog platforms, you don’t need to fake it; you choose “Heading 1,” “Heading 2,” “Heading 3” from the editor, and the software takes care of size and structure behind the scenes.
Learn how your platform handles headings and use the built-in options instead of improvising.
The mistake people make is using headings decoratively, like they're bolding things for emphasis. A heading is not emphasis.
A heading is a door. It tells the reader they are entering a different room.
If every paragraph has a heading, none of them mean anything.
Use them with intention. Space them out. Let sections breathe before you signal the next one.
And yes, when you’re on platforms without built‑in styles like a basic Facebook post, capitalize them. All of them. A lowercase “heading” in that environment looks like you almost tried.
DO NOT PUBLISH YOUR FIRST DRAFT
We need to talk about drafts.
Most people write a long Facebook post, hit “See more,” skim for typos, feel something in their chest, and then smash “Post.”
That first version is usually the messiest one you will ever produce.
This post? Went through sixteen revisions.
In writing, that first pass is called a rough draft for a reason.
It has the full idea, yes, but it also has extra words, tangled sentences, repeated points, and emotional spikes that haven’t cooled yet. It is not ready to meet the public.
So here’s a simple rule: do not publish your first draft.
For blogs, finish the draft, walk away, sleep, have coffee, and come back later with fresh eyes.
For Facebook, at least force yourself to scroll it twice.
First scroll: fix structure, break paragraphs, clean headings.
Second scroll: cut anything that feels like you’re repeating yourself or showing off.
If you want people to treat your writing seriously, you have to treat your own drafts with a little more discipline than “type and send.”
ONE MORE THING
I want more people to write. I want more long-form posts, more thoughtful blogs, more ordinary citizens trying to make sense of politics, life, and everything in between.
But writing for an audience, especially for a public one, means you are accountable to readability.
Your idea only matters if it lands. An argument buried in dense text is an argument that didn't reach anyone.
Part of why I write pieces like this is simple: I want more writers who respect their readers. More people who can argue, critique, and question without hiding behind bad formatting and heavy prose.
On your next post, don’t change your ideas yet. Just shorten the paragraphs, simplify the sentences, fix the headings, and give it one more read before you publish, then watch if more people finish it or start replying differently.
If you're one of those starting to write, keep going. Ayusin mo lang yung formatting.
You want people to push back, to think with you, to stay until the last line?
Write it so they can actually read it.