You don't have to be a designer to know a good looking newsletter when you see one. Newsletters that are nice to look at make them more compelling to read. Even if you use mostly text, you can make it look nice.

Your goal: make it visually accessible.

Dd you know journalists are trained to break paragraphs every sentence or two? The shorter paragraphs look more accessible to readers.

Bloggers and web-content creators are encouraged to keep articles short overall. People's attention spans are getting shorter all the time.

It's a good idea to break up your newsletter into sections. You might have separate boxes for different items. Adding subheadings can help. Write them as mini-summaries of what's coming in that section.

Another way to get your point across to skimmers is to bold your main points. But, don't overuse bold text.

Bullet points are one way to break up texts. They add some white space relief to our page, and they are easy to skim. They also allow you to cut some words.

Bullet points can be complete sentences, or just a few words. Remember to be consistent allowing each point to be in the same format.

Many people connect visually. Your friends and family want to know what you are doing. Use color whenever possible.

From "Writing Support Letters", a blog series by Donor Elf
http://www.donorelf.com/