Writing for the Web?

["Hart, Geoff" <Geoff-H -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA>]

Dave Carpenter reports: <<A non-writer friend was asking me about writing
web page content vs. paper docs. Since I've done so little web writing, I
wasn't sure what the answer is. I see little difference, from here. Audience
is what one writes to, not a medium. Am I wrong?>>

Audience is certainly crucial in determining your writing style; you need to
know what they're looking for and what they plan to do when they find it
before you can write effectively. Content is equally important, since you
can't give them what they need if the content is missing; the trick, of
course, is that every reader defines "content" differently.

Two stereotypes to ponder: Person A is the type who will actually read
novels onscreen, and is perfectly happy reading long, uninterrupted
stretches of text. Heck, we Type A people will read the ingredients list on
a cereal box if there's nothing else to read. <g> Person B is the type with
a limited attention span who wants the executive summary, not the details.
To meet the needs of that audience, you need to be providing more consise,
focused information in a manner that makes it easy to skim from topic to
topic, like a bee visiting a field of flowers, until they find what
satisfies them.

Stereotypes can reveal the extremes, but in doing so, they mask the reality.
Consider the following example: I'm looking for a specific chunk of text
that explains minimalism. I do a Web search and find several hundred tiny,
mostly meaningless chunks of information that may or may not lead to the
text I'm seeking. I follow a few links, and as I arrive at the Web site, I
skim quickly across the page to see if anything lets me think I've found
what I'm seeking; titles and abstracts help because if the current title
seems irrelevant, I can skip to the next title and ignore the text below the
current title. Bingo: now I've found a title that intrigues me, so I click
the link and sure enough, there's a 20-screen explanation of minimalism. So
I now read line by line, skipping nothing, and go away happy.

Different needs at different stages in my search: sometimes I just want
quick navigation to help me find what I'm looking for, and sometimes I want
to settle in with my coffee and immerse myself in page after page of text.
Come to think of it, maybe writing for the Web isn't so different from
writing for print after all. <g>.

--Geoff Hart, geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
Forest Engineering Research Institute of Canada
580 boul. St-Jean
Pointe-Claire, Que., H9R 3J9 Canada

"Technical writing... requires understanding the audience, understanding
what activities the user wants to accomplish, and translating the often
idiosyncratic and unplanned design into something that appears to make
sense."--Donald Norman, The Invisible Computer

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