Bite, Snack, Meal: A Practical Approach to Feeding Content-Hungry Readers

“How hungry is my reader?” When we write a web page, online report, or blog post, we’re often uncertain about our readers’ appetite for our content. Am I writing for a headline-only grazer? An executive summary diner? A footnotes-and-all chowhound? One size can’t fit all. What’s a writer to do?

Try the Bite, Snack, Meal approach. Give your readers meaningful content in three different sizes: a heading (Bite), a brief summary (Snack), and a long version (Meal). No, expressing the same idea three ways isn’t redundant; it’s accommodating. Some readers want nothing more than an informative heading. Others want to read more, lots more. Writing a Bite, Snack, and Meal helps you satisfy readers who want just a taste and those who want a buffet.

Bite, Snack, Meal in Action

The National Institutes of Health publishes a weekly update, Research Matters. These folks are masterful Bite, Snack, Meal writers. Here’s an example from May 2023:

• Bite: “Earlier smoking cessation may improve lung cancer survival.” If you read this heading only, you’ll get the message.
• Snack: “Lung cancer patients who quit smoking before diagnosis had significantly better survival rates than smokers—and the longer without smoking, the better the odds of survival.” This summary provides detail about the study population and research findings.
• Meal: Clicking the Bite takes you to the 441-word Meal, which offers lots of detail for interested readers. It explains the study size, length, and findings, then it links to the JAMA article where the original research was published.

But Bite, Snack, Meal isn’t just for newsletters. Use this approach for everything from social media posts to landing pages. That’s how the Peace Corps built its Agriculture page. They start with a message heading (Bite): “Strengthen Food Security.” They follow with a brief Snack:

Become an Agriculture Volunteer and work with smallholder farmers to improve food security, nutrition, and resilience to social, economic, and environmental stresses.

Agriculture Volunteers work with smallholder farmers to increase the diversity, productivity, and sustainability of their farming activities; boost income; and improve food security. Ready to help the planet grow better?

Then, the Peace Corp links to a Meal-amount of detail: videos, photos, and volunteer openings.

Bite, Snack, Meal Is a Plain Language Approach

With the Bite, Snack, Meal, we write the shorter versions (Bite and Snack) in plain language, so they’re understandable for all interested readers. The Meal can be more technical (a by-experts-for-experts version, if you will) because readers who seek more information are more likely to be able to cope with “un-plain” info such as background, technical terms, and citations.

The History of This Worthwhile Metaphor

I invented the Bite, Snack, Meal in 1996 when the web was new-ish. (I understand this makes me seem five years older than dirt itself.) People were struggling with the print-to-web transition. I used the Bite, Snack, Meal approach to explain why readers want message headings and why they need a summary before they click through to more detailed content.

Bite, Snack, Meal isn’t a novel concept. Many kinds of writing have a title, short summary, and full version. Reports have executive summaries, scholarly articles have abstracts, and news articles have leads. But Bite, Snack, Meal is a great metaphor. It works because “hunger” is a useful way of thinking about readers’ need for information, a need that varies by person, situation, and topic. A caring cook feeds people what they like and need. A competent writer feeds readers content in the size and level of detail they prefer.

Leslie O’Flahavan is a get-to-the point writer and an experienced, versatile writing instructor. E-WRITE owner since 1996, Leslie leads customized writing courses for Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, and non-profit organizations. 

Leslie helps the most stubborn, inexperienced, or word-phobic employees at your organization improve their writing skills, so they can do their jobs better. As a result of her work, Leslie’s clients improve their customer satisfaction ratings, reduce training cycles, improve productivity, and limit legal risk. Leslie is a LinkedIn Learning author of six writing courses including Writing in Plain Language, Technical Writing, and Writing for Social Media. She’s the cohost of the monthly LinkedIn Live broadcast “Fix This Writing!”

Photo by Ali Inay on Unsplash