How to write for the Web (it ain’t just words on a page)
By Bill, on May 19th, 2010
Looking at research around writing for the web quickly turns up a central paradox: Readers scan web pages, they don’t read them like books, they jump from page to page, from link to link and back again, they drop stories and headlines within reading the first two words YET people are apt to finish more stories on the web, and to read deeper into stories if they finally do light on them.
What’s up?
Hard to say. Surely it has something to do with the conditioning we’ve received on the web, with the continual invitations to distraction that a page crammed with links represents. Maybe it also represents a shift in the way we relate to information, a shift away from the rigidly linear world of print, and one that will only accelerate with the maturing of touch and vocal interfaces.
What the heck do I know.
I do have some ideas about what you need to do to write well for the web – they’re summarized in this deck from today’s final day of Camp Versatile Journalist at 1 Yonge. Enjoy.
(If you’d like to have checklist for covering breaking news, an extension of these principles, get it here.)
Bill