Five tips when writing online

I’ve been working professionaly in new media for a decade now – the first half as an interactive designer and the second half as a new media journalist. Over the decade I’ve written tens of thousands of words.

As an interactive designer for a relatively small development company I regularly found myself writing help files or copy for company websites based on pages of pointless spiel.

As a New Media Journalist for the BBC I write about 5000 words per week and sometimes even more. On top of that I’ve been blogging for three years and have written thousands of words through this.

During my time in New Media I’ve come across a few tips and tricks (some from a number of BBC training courses) around writing content for the web.

So here are some simple rules I try to stick to (although on my blog I ignore the pyramid writing one).

1) Short paragraphs with one point per paragraph.

Good:

It makes sense to keep a paragraph short and simple because reading something on a screen can be an uncomfortable experience.

Not so good:

If you make a paragraph very long and talk about a lot of things in one go and try to explain the various reasons why you’re writing that paragraph you start to make things very difficult to read. If I’d split this into three seperate paragraphs you would probably find this a lot easier to read than it is with the several points I’ve raised in this place.

2) Keep articles reasonably short – ideally around 600-700 words at most – if more is needed think about splitting it up.

The beauty of the internet is the ability to split content and create links between two seperate features or websites.

If I have a very long piece to write I’ll think about writing it over two or more features instead of in one long article. An example is the series on Browsers I’m doing.

3) Personal style – write as if you’re talking to a friend.

Another things worth thinking about is keeping style personal. When you’re writing just imagine you’re talking to a friend but through your fingers instead of your mouth.

4) Write like a pyramid

The first paragraph (summary) has to give the basics of the story and the following four paragraphs have to tell the whole story. Anything under the top four paragraphs is extra information and filler.

This approach is also known as writing to the fold – most site designs (that stick to the standard interface) will show around four paragraphs within a single 1024×768 screen.

5) Headlines might be lonely

As content is now published across multiple platforms – there is a fairly likely possibility that at one point or another a headline will have to exist on its own with no summary so it need to reasonably explain what lives underneath it.

Well they’re my basic tips when writing for the web in importance order – any more I might of missed or do you disagree with something I’ve written?