The web

Remember that writing for the web demands all the same skills and discipline as any other kind of writing – only much more so. Readers of text on the web are usually called ‘users’, and they have just as functional an attitude as the name implies: if they don’t find information straight away, they will look elsewhere. This makes signposting and brevity the cardinal virtues.

These virtues are made all the more important by the fact that you have only a small space to work in: the browser window is narrower than the page of a document, and a great deal of space is taken up by navigation bars, search boxes, and other standard elements of the site over which you have no control. Fiddly controls and delays while material is downloaded also mean that it is much less easy for readers to skim through text and see what is relevant to them.

Here are some tips when writing for the web:

1. Address your readers directly (i.e. use the word “you” to refer to them).
2. Answer the question: why would someone come to this page? In fact, you can often use the answer as the title of the page (e.g. “What is Acme Mousetrap Co?”). Give people what they need to know straight away, think who they are likely to be, and then provide links to other information you think they’ll want to know. At every stage, make it clear what the relevance is to your reader.
3. Write in bite-size chunks – this allows you to take advantage of your reader’s ability to use hyperlinks to jump from place to place. You can make these chunks relevant to particular readers and then use links to organise them and present them to the reader.
4. Use short sentences – the narrowness of the columns and the impatience of your readers make long sentences unsuitable.