The Case for Writing Shorter Articles in 2026
Short blogging wins
Scenario A: Nobody asked for 4,000 words on my morning routine.
Scenario B: I really don’t think people want 4000 words on my morning routine.
I have 900+ articles on Medium and over 1,000 on Substack. That’s a lot of writing. A lot of experimenting with length, format, structure, depth.
And many of my longest pieces are not my best. By quality and by reader engagement.
They felt important when I wrote them. 3,000 words on some topic I cared about, carefully structured, every angle covered. And then they’d get half the reads of a 700-word piece I threw together in 15 minutes.
That happened enough times to notice.
Short blogging
I think reader behavior shifted along with social media attention span adaptions. Not dramatically. But enough to care.
People still read long articles. They do. Substack is proof of that. But the bar for KEEPING someone in a 3,000-word piece is higher than it used to be, I’d say.
There’s more competition for attention now. More newsletters. More creators. More stuff in the feed.
A focused 800-word piece that makes one point well gets the read. Gets shared. Gets finished.
A 2,500-word piece that makes the same point but also covers seven tangential ideas, and people bounce after the third section.
I’ve seen this in my own stats. Pretty often.
The numbers
I went through my last 100 or so Medium stories. Just roughly. Looking at read ratios, claps, engagement relative to views.
Articles under 1,000 words had higher read ratios. Not always, but on average.
Articles over 2,000 words performed better in total views when they hit. But they hit less often. And when they didn’t hit, they really didn’t hit.
The sweet spot, for me at least, seems to be somewhere around 800 to 1,200 words. Long enough to say something good. Short enough that people finish it.
On Substack, the pattern is similar but a bit different. Newsletter emails especially. Nobody wants a 3,000-word email showing up on a Tuesday morning.
I don’t want that. You don’t want that. At least, not all the time.
Why we write long
There are good reasons to write long. And then there are the real reasons most of us write long.
The good reasons: some topics genuinely need depth. Tutorials, guides, comparisons. You can’t do a proper SEO breakdown in 600 words. (I tried that with my Substack SEO guide and… it ended up being one of my longer pieces for a reason.)
The “real” reasons: we think longer equals more valuable (or more SEO juice and reads). We pad sections. We add examples we don’t need because the article feels “thin” without them.
I’ve done all of that. Many times.
There’s also this Medium thing where people used to say longer stories earn more because read time affects earnings. That may have been true at some point.
I’m not sure it still is, and even if it is, an article nobody finishes doesn’t earn much regardless of its word count.
Then again, too short is also problematic for Medium earnings.
When depth matters
Not everything should be short. That would be silly. We still watch YouTube videos. Not only short TikToks, Reels, or Shorts.
Depth matters when the reader NEEDS it. How-to guides. Technical walkthroughs. Detailed comparisons where the details are the whole point. Or just great stories.
If someone searches for “how to set up a writing automation system,” they want the steps. All of them. Cutting that short would be doing them a disservice.
But many opinion pieces, personal essays, and takes on industry trends don’t need 4000 words. They need a clear point, some evidence or experience to back it up, and a conclusion.
That’s 800 words. 1,000. Maybe 1500.
The rest is usually padding. And fluff.
What padding looks like
I’ve gotten better at spotting it in my own drafts. It usually shows up as:
A third example when two already made the point
A section that restates the introduction in slightly different words
An entire paragraph explaining why a thing is important, when the reader already knows it’s important because they clicked on the article
Qualifying statements that add nothing (“It goes without saying that…” then why are you saying it?)
These days I try to catch that stuff.
I use a writing system that helps me plan and structure before I write, which makes a difference. Less wandering. More focus.
The downsides
Shorter articles are harder to monetize on Medium. That’s true.
Read time still factors into earnings somehow, and a 3-minute read pays less than a 7-minute read if both get the same engagement. I think.
They’re also harder to make SEO-friendly. Google still likes comprehensive content. A 500-word post about a broad topic won’t rank for much.
And there’s a perception issue. Some readers equate length with effort. A short article can feel “light” even when it took the same amount of thinking and editing.
Maybe even more editing. Cutting is hard.
Plus, not every idea fits in 800 words. Some of my favorite pieces I’ve written are longer because the topic demanded it. Forcing those into a shorter format would have made them worse, I believe.
My approach now
One question: what’s the ONE point of this article?
If I can state it in a sentence, I probably don’t need 2,000 words to make it. If I can’t state it in a sentence, I probably need to think more before I start writing.
For my AI writing automation piece, the point was “here’s exactly how my system works, step by step.” That needed some length. Each step was a section.
For this article, the point is “shorter articles often perform better and most writers (me included) pad without realizing it.” That doesn’t need 3,000 words. It needs enough to make the case and share what I’ve learned.
So I aim for 1,000 to 1,200 words most of the time now. I go longer when the topic requires it. I go shorter whenever I can.
Word count is not a quality signal.
The Bottom Line
Many articles don’t need to be as long as they are.
More words don’t mean more value. It often means less focus, more padding, and a reader who leaves halfway through.
The best compliment I get on a story isn’t “that was detailed.” It’s “that was exactly what I needed.”
And that often comes from the shorter ones.