Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.
Writing for the web (newbies)
Author: Dru Oja Jay Posted: 12/7/1999; 9:34:23 AM Topic: Writing for the web (newbies) Msg #: 13476 Prev/Next: 13475 / 13477
To Dave and other web writers/webloggers:With all the new weblogs that are sprouting up (and soon to sprout), I thought it would be a good idea to start something of a FAQ for writing for the web, so that 'newbies' don't have to reinvent the weblog with each new site on editthispage.com.
I thought discuss.userland.com would be a good place to start such a discussion/sharing of experiences of web publishing, wee-blogging, and the like, with the goal of filling others in on what this medium is like.
Some quick observations:
A lot of webloggers seem to insinuate an opinion when they link to a site, and assume that people know what they're referring to. At first I thought this was just a nuance of blogging, but I've come to see it as a bit lazy: if you're going to state an opinion, do it explicitly. Few writers can carry off the nuance bit with any effectiveness (and who are that experienced will probably ignore me). Thoughts?
As I've said on my weblog in the past few days, I find the web is conducive to writing very concisely (if you want to keep your audience).
It also seems that visually, the web likes to use a lot of spaces (suck, davenet) - why is this, and are there any other qualities y'all think go hand in hand with web publishing?
What about appropriate uses of italics, bold, and what words to link?
I just got an instant message from a friend: "it does seem that he net has created or encouraged the use of bites (or bytes) and that this is in contrast to conventional writing" To me, the web is good for long pieces, because you don't worry about the amount of paper you're using, and good for short pieces, because people have so little time. The web is full of contradictions.
I did a Davenet search for "writing for the web", but got back mostly pieces about the nature of the web as a whole, not the nuances of publishing in electronic text.
Cameron Barrett has some useful info in his Anatomy of a Weblog and other weblog-related rants.
I'm probably missing lots of good links, so feel free to make additions.
Looking forward to hearing from those veteran web writers out there.
Dru
There are responses to this message:
- Re: Writing for the web (newbies), Brian Carnell, 12/7/1999; 10:24:33 AM
- Re: Writing for the web (newbies), Rebecca Blood, 12/7/1999; 11:08:20 AM
- Re: Writing for the web (newbies), Luke Tymowski, 12/7/1999; 12:26:53 PM
- Re: Writing for the web (newbies), Jakob Nielsen, 12/7/1999; 3:21:12 PM
- Re: Writing for the web: SOME LINKS, garizpe@arzp.com, 12/7/1999; 5:09:41 PM
- Re: Writing for the web / discussion groups, Stéphane Volet, 12/7/1999; 5:29:05 PM
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