Short is Sweet for Web Copy Writing
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You can’t write the same way for the web as you would for a print publication. Site visitors focus differently on the web; they skim rather than read. You can’t change their behavior, so if you want to get your point across, you need to change the way you write.
Survey after survey proves it: it’s more difficult to read online, and even good readers tend to read 25 percent slower from a computer screen than from paper. Add to that the shortened attention spans most people bring to the Internet, and you can kiss the style you brought to writing college research papers good-by. Oh sure, you need to keep the rules of proper grammar and spelling in mind, but you may need to rethink everything else.
For example, look at the paragraph you just read. It’s almost too long for the web. You need to keep your paragraphs somewhat short and punchy. And if you ever learned, like me, that a paragraph should comprise four to six sentences, you need to do some unlearning – and be prepared to break some rules to get your point across.
Ideas about writing for the web go back at least a decade, maybe more. Jacob Nielsen, a former Sun Microsystems Distinguished Engineer and now a “user advocate” with 79 US patents, has written a number of articles about usability going back at least that far (with many that are more recent). His web site is worth a look, because he frequently talks about how people use the web, which has a direct bearing on how you should write. I draw some of the ideas I’ll be explaining here from some of his work. Many others on the web have expressed similar ideas.
For instance, have you ever heard of the pyramid and inverted pyramid styles of writing? The pyramid style of writing is more academic; most research papers and textbooks are written in this way. Think of it as starting with a basic explanation that may draw in other resources to establish a firm foundation, then building up to more specialized areas and concluding with a short summary of the work.
That’s great for scientists and students, but it’s not the kind of writing you need to do for the Internet. Just as the Internet has turned the world upside down, you need to turn that pyramid upside down to write sensibly for the web. Start with the short summary; think of it as an executive summary if that helps. Then fill things in. Journalists often write this way, putting “who, what, where, when, how and why” in the first paragraph of their articles. Find your inner Clark Kent and get to work.
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