What is the Purpose of the Text?

What do you have to say? Think about what the reader would like to know about the subject. Try to answer the reader’s needs speedily and thoroughly. This article is about how to write an online text which is quick to read.

Don’t Delay What You Have to Say

A good quality online text is usually built in the manner of a newspaper article where the most important material is placed first. You should write the most significant content at the beginning and continue to the less important parts – after that, you can return to the start and add an introduction. The introduction can then be used as a base for the headline, which should essentially offer a description of the story in a nutshell.

The Eye Follows the Left Side of the Text

The news story structure quickly answers the needs of an online reader. The point of the text is presented in the first few lines, and an impatient browser is not going to read much else. Jacob Nielsen has used a camera which tracks the eye movements and stated that electronic newsletters are read in an F-shaped pattern. The headlines and a few first lines are looked through, but after that the eye starts to slide down the left side without really stopping. So you should always pay particular attention to the headlines and the first words in a line of text.

Readability Above All

The writing should remain light both online and on paper. Without noticing it themselves, people are often tempted to write about their own field using jargon that may be incomprehensible to outsiders. You should look at your own text from the perspective of someone outside your group: abbreviations, terminology and long compounds are always less clearly understood than is assumed. Think and write practically: don’t talk about “media” if you specifically mean The New York Times.

Brevity is a virtue. Whenever possible, replace a long expression with a short one. Fight for every word and character. A compact piece of writing is always better than a fumbling long one. In particular, beware of strange, long compound words and the noun-heavy jargon style.

Practice by writing 140 character messages on the subject on Twitter. You’ll get great ideas for headlines as well as introductions – and you’ll notice that longer text is often unnecessary.

Online text consists of many independent parts that are linked together. The texts must be written in such a way that they work independently, but can also be easily linked to other pieces of writing.

For Those Who Need More Information

A link connects two parts of the content on one page, or two separate pages. Sometimes people talk about structural and associative links; the first serve the purposes of navigation and the latter offer additional information.

Links that give extra information can lead to either the content on your own page or somewhere else. It has become customary that internal links to your own website open in the same browser window, while the pages outside your website open to a new window – even though some usability experts have expressed differing views on the matter.

If the text is long, its usability can be enhanced by adding a linked list of contents. The subtitles come straight after the main headline – usually one below the other and sometimes side-by–side, separated by a vertical line. A list of contents takes up some of the precious space from the top of the screen, but it offers the reader the possibility to pick up the information he needs without scrolling down the page.

Link Your Key Words

When naming your links, you should follow a consistent practice: you can lead to pages by using only the name or an address – or both. The first alternative is the easiest for the reader, however. While thinking about naming the links, you should focus on what best serves the reader. Keywords support skimming very well, while long links make the text seem patchy, while choosing only pronouns offer poor predictions for content. For example: “You can read about Twitter here” should be changed to “Are you interested in Twitter?

You should provide enough clues in your text to show what the content of your link is. The better the reader is able to predict the content opening with a link, the less there will be unnecessary clicking. Transparent links, names and titles make the text more usable.

Spice Up Your Online Text with Links

Links that offer additional information are a part of web texts and should not be avoided. However, they should be chosen with care. You’ll find that general explanations, argumentation, examples and new perspectives are useful extra material. Even so, it’s better to offer a few specific links rather than ten random ones as well as clarify their purpose. The links should naturally also be functional and up-to-date – it’s extremely frustrating to click on a link and find that it’s missing or ‘dead’.

Students are often offered additional material in other file formats. The essential content of these should provide a short explanation on the web text, so that the reader can predict whether the file should really be opened or not. The link of the file should make clear what the form of the file (pdf, doc, ppt, etc.) and its size are – for example, IT vocabulary (Word document, 24 kbts).

Two-way interaction is at the core of social media. Following and sharing information go hand-in-hand. If you don’t have the time to follow what other people are saying, you won’t be able to fit your own message into the conversation.

Be Genuine and Positive

Controlling the tone of the messages is an important skill if you mean to be active online. As general advice, one could say that positivity and willingness to interact suit the web as well as other kinds of communication. Honest dialogue which impartially considers different opinions is the most useful for all parties.

Messaging in social media is often placed somewhere between speech and writing. In speech, various tones can be expressed in many ways, but in written dialogue the way of saying things easily becomes monotonous. Naturally the tone control varies between different writers, but the tone of one individual writer is surprisingly permanent. It’s interesting to study both your own and others’ messages, while keeping in mind the question of tone: how do the various expressionsfeel? With respect to tone, it isn’t important to be concerned about the literal content of the message, but rather what it feels like.

Humour is difficult to master, but some levity is always called for. The advantage of humour is that it allows you to keep a healthy distance, but in an emergency excess tension can be loosened with asmiley. You can forget about unnecessary pomposity as studies prove that the more you let your personality show, the more interesting you become in an online environment.

Read and Re-Read Every Message and Answer

You should always make sure that you start and finish your messages in a friendly way, because negativity only tends to aggravate others. An instructive, authoritative style of presentation in the manner of “this is how it is” comes across as stifling, while the same content formulated “I think this is how it is” invites participation. Your tone is generally made better if you have the patience of mind to read other people’s messages a few times and not react too quickly. It is often beneficial for the atmosphere of the conversation to cite the responses others have given and thereby prove that you’ve read and understood them.

Directing interaction takes skill, as it should be done in the spirit of free conversation without a teacher-like attitude and authority. The participants should be given time to form their opinions so that the first and last comment don’t always come from the teacher. Flexible communication is supported by an atmosphere that promotes contemplation – where the aim is not in getting right or wrong answers, but a conversation having many voices.

Are Online Conversations Impartial?

Online interaction has been interpreted as more democratic and less tied to the speaker’s social position than face-to-face conversations. The matter does however call for more thorough investigation, because more and more often – even on specialist message boards – you will run into participants who feel that their comments have been ignored. Power settings have an impact online too, but they are not necessarily formed in the same way as in face-to-face communication.

A new feature in social media communication is its multi-centeredness as well as publicity, which make the conversations more varied but also demand that you learn the rules of public conversations and the proper netiquette. The quality of the conversation is usually improved if you use your own name or you’re able to connect the user name with the right person.