As I mentioned in another posting, my daughter Sarah Ives, writes for the National Geographic web site and their kid’s web site. She has mentioned some guidelines for web writing on several occasions so I asked her to summarize her main principals. I added a few that I observed from her writing.
Keep your total length less than you would in another format and link to longer versions if necessary. Then the reader knows what they are getting into and wants the greater detail.
Keep your paragraphs shorter than other formats. It is difficult to read long paragraphs on a computer screen.
Keep your writing concise and snappy--it's easy for people with short attention spans to click away from your site.
Use the resources of the web--provide related links to other relevant web sites.
Cite your sources--just because you are not officially publishing something, you still can't claim someone else's work as your own and you need to back up what you claim.
Keep in mind that the whole world can see what you write. Even though your distribution is probably much smaller, the potential for anyone finding your material is present. While you should know your audience and target it, remember that you can get many unintended audiences.
Think about embedding key words if you want to get picked up by search engines for the concepts represented by these words.
Rebecca Blood, one of the pioneers in web logs, has offered some useful tips for web logs than include things to consider when writing for the web in general. She also offers provides ethical guidelines for web log writing. I am interested in any additions and corrections to the above list.
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