Writing for the Web = Writing for People
by matt
Great post over at Patrick’s blog about the annoying use of the word “virtual” to describe everything online.
This hit me recently when someone at work asked me to re-edit a document because it was “too Web-speak”. I thought about it for a little and realized what he probably meant was, “It’s too conversational, relaxed, and needs to be dressed up more.”
What he was calling “Web-speak” is actually just “People-speak”.
If you spoke to people the way advertisements speak to people, you would get punched in the face.
Hugh McLeod
And I’m learning more and more that writing for the Web is in fact just writing for people. Conversational, relaxed, clear – the way you would speak to someone if you bumped into them in a supermarket or at a pub.
It’s the old writing – the “writing for print” that was out of touch with reality.
Comments
brilliant…
Well said.
Writing for the web is writing for people and writing for print is writing for people. Style just depends on the target audience.
Bukowski would think I’m a jerk too…
I think it’s the medium that makes the difference. It’s really hard work to read something the length of a chapter of a book, or even a long magazine article on a computer screen. So if you’re writing for the web that should really be taken into account – if you want people to reach the end of what you’re writing. That’s where the style comes into play.
If you write in a friendly – possibly more comment/blog style – you’re only making your piece more accessible. That’s what the web is about, ultimately. The more accessible, the more readers, the more successful. The web is a populist medium after all.
Odd. I recently became aware of this myself when I suddenly realized that writing on the internet is less a formal writing style and more a psuedo-transcript, essentially a dictated conversation. Gestalt!
Brilliant! I find this so interesting and I’m a bit sick of being a virtual friend.
I don’t care what I am, virtual sounds dreadful!