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Writing content for the web

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The development and success of the internet may still be in its infancy, but a world without the web has already become hard to imagine. It is now possible to find almost everything on the World Wide Web and in most countries people are using the internet as an information tool, an entertainment source, and a communication channel on a daily basis. Billions of websites are out there, but only one represents your organisation.

There are several things that make a good website; the content, the layout, the navigation design, the timeliness and the accessibility. Web designers make a profession out of building successful websites, but an organisation can start to improve its site by simply focusing on the site's written content. There are a few basic rules for writing effectively over the web and these should be considered anytime you are posting content on your site or converting news material that was originally written for traditional media sources.

It's a new audience

As in traditional writing, before you start putting words on paper, you need to think of whom the audience is that you are trying to reach. The right content with the proper messages needs to be written for an internet minded audience. This audience is different than traditional print readers - the internet generally attracts a younger audience with a short attention span who consume a lot of information in a short amount of time. There is indeed a mix of people that will visit your site, those who visit regulary and those who come across the site looking for something in particular, or even arrive there by accident. Who is it that you are trying to communicate with the most- regular visitors or first time users? What does the audience expect from your website: daily news or detailed information on a product or organisation? Questions such as these need to be part of the thought process before you start writing.

Besides knowing what you would like to write about and who the audience you are trying to reach is there are two main rules of web writing which you should consider while updating or developing your website: Write in a pyramid style and keep your sentences simple.

Write in a pyramid style

The spread of the internet and the increased access to loads of information has resulted in people having shorter attention spans for consuming information. People do not spend a lot of time reading articles anymore, and have become accustomed to scanning headlines and reading brief overviews. This means that content needs to be displayed clearly and needs to be easy to read and understand.

When writing for the web a pyramid like structure should be used. This means that all of your ideas should be grouped together in one main sentence or headline. This can be followed by a brief overview of the topic before displaying a 'read more' button for those who which to read further. The pyramid structure allows for readers to scan headlines and gather information quickly before they move onto the next website. If it takes them too long to find or read through information, users will find other more user friendly sources to gather their information or news.

Keep it simple

Unlike in traditional writing, people are looking for quick and simple material rather than impressive writing styles or grammatical prose. Therefore it is valuable to keep your sentences very simple for fast and easy comprehension. Ensuring that the language and sentence structures are simple will allow readers to scan the material and not get distracted by writing styles.

On the web you can start to simplify your writing by avoiding relative clauses (the part of a sentence that starts with the words 'that', 'who', 'what'). To explain and outline an idea and to follow it up by using a relative clause will make your text interesting. However, if your sentence becomes an accumulating of different explanations, ideas and connections the reader might get confused and eventually will fail to recall the information. Therefore try to turn the sentence either into an 'if' or 'when' clause or split it into two different sentences.

To keep your readers attention and to generate interactivity, try to write in the active tense. For example if the active form is 'The assistant wrote the speech' the passive form would be 'The speech was written by the assistant'. Passive sentences especially if they are long and complicated will take the reader much longer to understand. Therefore write actively and make it as easy as possible to read your text.

Another writing style you should avoid is using negative verbs connected to words like 'no', 'not' or 'neither', in other words double negative expressions. It will take the reader more time to translate negative statements into positive statements to fully understand the meaning of your sentence. Further to that positive writing will generate a positive feeling towards your text and for sure you want to have happy readers.

Start with changing your writing skills for the web

Compared to all other forms of traditional communication such as newspapers, books, brochures, magazines and letters the World Wide Web has the unique possibility of being interactive and easily accessible. People have started to expect that all websites will be designed to make information easy to access, up to date and quick to read. To look at design and navigation requirements for websites is as well really important but much more difficult to implement. So start with the web writing and next time you are preparing content for the web, or have a press release that is going out to traditional media sources, take the time to review it and keep these simple guidelines in mind. Make sure your organisation is up to speed and start to think about how you can change your communication material from traditional writing to web writing.

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