Some parts of the web are finished, unchanging creations – as
polished and as fixed as books or posters. But many parts change all
the time:
- news sites bring up-to-the-minute developments, ranging from breaking news and sports scores to reports on specific industries, markets, and technical fields
- weblogs, journals, and other personal sites provide a window on the interests and opinions of their creators
- corporate weblogs, wikis, knowledge banks, community sites, and workgroup journals provide share news and knowledge among co-workers and supply-chain stakeholders
Some of these sites change every week; many change every day; a few
change every few minutes. Daypop’s Dan Chan calls
this the Living Web, the part of the web that is always
changing.
Every revision requires new writing, new words that become the
essence of the site. Living sites are only as good as today’s update.
If the words are dull, nobody will read them, and nobody will come
back. If the words are wrong, people will be misled, disappointed,
infuriated. If the words aren’t there, people will shake their heads
and lament your untimely demise.
Writing for the Living Web is a tremendous challenge. Here are ten
tips that can help.
1. Write for a reason#section2
Write for a reason, and know why you write. Whether your daily
updates concern your work life, your hobbies, or your innermost
feelings, write passionately about things that matter.
To an artist, the smallest grace note and the tiniest flourish may be
matters of great importance. Show us the details, teach us why they
matter. People are fascinated by detail and enthralled by passion;
explain to us why it matters to you, and no detail is too small, no
technical question too arcane.
Bad personal sites bore us by telling us about trivial events and
casual encounters about which we have no reason to care. Don’t tell
us what happened: tell us why it matters. Don’t tell us your opinion:
tell us why the question is important.
If you don’t really care, don’t write. If you are a student and
everybody is talking about exams and papers and you simply don’t
care, let it be. If your job bores you, it will bore us. (If you
despise your job with a rich, enduring passion, that’s another thing
entirely!) Write for yourself; you are, in the end, your most
important reader.
If your site belongs to a product, a project, or an enterprise, you
must still find a way to represent its passion and excitement. If
you do not understand why your product is compelling or comprehend
the beauty of your enterprise, find the reason or find a new writer.
Write honestly. Don’t hide, and don’t stop short. When writing about
things that matter, you may be tempted to flee to safe, familiar
havens: the familiar, the sentimental, the fashionable. Try to find the
strength to be honest, to avoid starting the journey with passion and
ending it with someone else’s tired formula. The work may be hard, it
may be embarrassing, but it will be true – and it will be you, not a
tired formula or an empty design. And if you can be satisfied with
that tired formula, you aren’t writing for a reason.
Never, for any consideration, publish a statement you know to be false.
Though you write with passion about things that matter greatly,
always remember that it’s a big world, filled with people and
stories. Don’t expect the world to stop and listen. Never expect any
individual (or, worse, any quantity of individuals) to read your
work, for they may have other things to do. At the same time, steel
yourself to expect the unexpected visitor and the uninvited guest;
the most unlikely people may read your work. Your mother, who never
uses a computer, may read your intimate weblog one day in the
library. To be honest with the world, you may need to be honest with
your mother; if you cannot face your mother, perhaps you are not
ready to write for the world.
2. Write often#section3
If you are writing for the Living Web, you must write consistently.
You need not write constantly, and you need not write long, but you
must write often. One afternoon in grad school, I heard B. F. Skinner
remark that fifteen minutes a day, every day, adds up to about book
every year, which he suggested was as much writing as anyone should
indulge. You don’t need to write much, but you must write, and write
often.
If you don’t write for a few days, you are unfaithful to the readers
who come to visit. Missing an update is a small thing – rudeness,
not betrayal – and readers will excuse the occasional lapse.
If you are inconsistent, readers will conclude you are untrustworthy.
If you are absent, readers will conclude you are gone. It’s better to
keep religiously to a once-a-week, or once-a-fortnight schedule, than
to go dark mysteriously.
If you cannot write for a time, and the reason for your absence is
interesting, write about it. Your honeymoon, your kidney transplant,
your sister’s gubernatorial inauguration – all these can be
predicted and worked into the fabric of your writing so that the
interruption, when it comes, seems natural. But avoid, if you can,
sudden cryptic pronouncements: “I’ll be unable to post for a while”
gives us nothing we can use or learn from.
Don’t assume that you will find something to say every morning. The
day will come, sooner or later, when you need inspiration and
find you have none. Store topics, news items, entire articles for
slow times. Carry a notebook or a PDA and jot down reminders. You
cannot have too many notes saved up, but you can easily find yourself
with too few.
Since you write often, use good tools. Select them to fit your hand
and voice. Learn to use them well.
3. Write tight#section4
Omit unnecessary words.
Choose a visual design that fits your voice. Unless the design is the
point of your site, select colors and visual elements that support
without dominating. Resist the temptation to add features, for it is
often best to use only those few technical and design elements that support
your mission. Don’t rush to replace a good design: you will grow
bored with it long before your readers do.
Read your work. Revise it. Don’t worry about being correct, but take a moment now and then to think about the craft. Can you
choose a better word – one that is clearer, richer, more precise?
Can you do without a word entirely?
Omit unnecessary words.
4. Make good friends#section5
Read widely and well, on the web and off, and in your web writing
take special care to acknowledge the good work and good ideas of
other writers. Show them at their best, pointing with grace and
respect to issues where you and they differ. Take special care to be
generous to good ideas from those who are less well known, less
powerful, and less influential than you.
Weblog writers and other participants in the Living Web gain readers
by exchanging links and ideas. Seeking to exchange links without
ideas is vulgarly known as blogrolling. Begging high-traffic pages or
famous writers to mention you is bothersome and unproductive
Instead of begging, find ways to be a good friend. All writers thrive
on ideas; distribute them generously and always share the credit. Be
generous with links. Be generous, too, with your time and effort;
A-list sites may not need your traffic, but everyone can use a hand.
Many prominent web writers travel a lot – to conferences, meetings,
trade shows. Sooner or later, they’ll come to your corner of the
world. Offer to feed them. Invite them to parties. Offer to introduce
them to interesting people. They might be too busy. They might be too
shy. But the road can be a lonely place, and it’s always interesting
to meet thinking people.
Small, thoughtful gifts are nice. Share books you love, or that
you’ve written. If you’re a photographer or an artist, prints and
sketches can be unique and memorable. (Include permission to
reproduce them on the web.) Join their cause. Donate to their charity.
Friends are vital for business sites as well, but business and
friendship can be a volatile mix. Your prospects, customers and
vendors are obvious friends, but both they and your readers will
understand that your friendship is not disinterested. Unlikely
friends, including your competitors, may prove more convincing.
5. Find good enemies#section6
Readers love controversy and learn from debate. Disagreement is
exciting. Everyone loves a fight, and by witnessing the contest of
competing ideas we can better understand what they imply.
Dramatic conflict is an especially potent tool for illuminating
abstract and technical issues, whether in software engineering or
business planning. At times, choosing a communications protocol or
adopting an employee benefits plan may seem an abstract task, barely
related to the human crises that daily confront us. If each
alternative has a determined, effective advocate, however, it may
reveal the source of the conflict and to remind us of the
consequences of the choice.
To make an abstract or difficult point more real, identify and
respond to an advocate who holds a different position. Choose your
opponent with care. If you choose a rival who is much less powerful
than you, readers may see you as a bully. If your rival is a business
competitor, you may seem unscrupulous. The best enemy, in fact, is
often a friend – a writer you cite frequently and who often cites
you, but with whom you disagree on a specific questions.
A handful of individuals seemingly live for controversy and seek out
ways to create and inflame disputes. These so-called trolls are
chiefly the bane of discussion groups but occasionally find their way
into the Living Web. Never engage them; you cannot win. (Trolls, when
ignored, will usually retire. If they cause danger or damage that
cannot be ignored, the police and the courts will assist you.)
When beginning a debate, always have in mind a plan for ending it.
Ill-planned arguments can drag on, lost in a mass of boring detail or
irrelevant side-issues. Worse, the personalities of the advocates may
become more engaging than the issues, obscuring your purpose
entirely. Have in mind, from the outset, an idea of how long you want
to engage the issue and how you expect the exercise to end (or reach
a resting point). Plan a conclusion before firing the first salvo.
You might devise an event – a final meeting, a live debate or online
poll – that will provide a sense of closure. Write a joint
communique for your readers or your management, summarizing the
outstanding issues and highlighting progress. Then archive both sides
of the exchange – perhaps with annotation from a neutral authority
– so future readers may enjoy and benefit from the conflict.
When it’s over, try to make good friends with good enemies.
6. Let the story unfold#section7
The Living Web unfolds in time, and as we see each daily revelation
we experience its growth as a story. Your arguments and rivalries,
your ideas and your passions: all of these grow and shift in time,
and these changes become the dramatic arc of your website.
Understand the storyteller’s art and use the technique of narrative
to shape the emerging structure of your living site.
Foreshadowing hints at future events and expected interests:
your vacation, the election campaign, the endless midnight hours at
work in the days before the new product ships. Surprise, an
unexpected flash of humor or a sudden change of direction, refreshes
and delights. Use links within your work to build depth, for today’s
update will someday be your own back story.
People are endlessly fascinating. Write about them with care and
feeling and precision. Invented characters, long a staple of
newspaper columnists, are rarely seen on the Living Web; creating a
fascinating (but imaginary) friend could balance your own character
on your site.
When the star of the site is a product or an organization, temper the
temptation to reduce the narrative to a series of triumphs. Although
you don’t usually want to advertise bad news, your readers know that
every enterprise faces challenges and obstacles. Consider sharing a
glimpse of your organization’s problems: having seen the challenge,
your readers will experience your success more vividly.
Interweave topics and find ways to vary your pacing and tone. Piling
tension on tension, anger on rage, is ultimately self-defeating;
sooner or later, the writing will demand more from you than you can
give and the whole edifice will collapse in boredom or farce. When
one topic, however important, overshadows everything else in your
site, stop. Change the subject; go somewhere new, if only for a
moment. When you return, you and your reader will be fresher and
better prepared.
7. Stand up, speak out#section8
If you know your facts and have done your homework, you have a right
to your opinion. State it clearly. Never waffle, whine, or weasel.
If you are not sure you are right, ask yourself why you are writing.
If you are seeking information or guidance from your readers, ask
them. Don’t bore them (and discredit yourself) with a hesitant,
unformed opinion. If you are writing in order to discover your mind
or to try out a new stance, continue by all means– but file the note
in your desk drawer, not on your website.
If you believe you are right, say so. Explain why. It doesn’t matter
that you are young, or unknown, or lack credentials, or that crowds
of famous people disagree. Don’t hesitate or muddy the water. The
truth matters; show us the right answer, and get out of the way.
Never lie about your competitors, and never exult in your rival’s bad news.
Try, if you can, to avoid inflicting unnecessary pain and humiliation
on those who have the misfortune to be mistaken. People err, and you too will be wrong tomorrow. Civility is not mere stuffiness; it
can be the glue that lets us fight for our ideas and, once we
recognize the right answer, sit down together for drinks and dinner.
8. Be sexy#section9
You are a sexual being. So are all of your readers (except the Google
robot). Sex is interesting. Sex is life, and life is interesting. The
more of yourself you put into your writing, the more human and
engaging your work will be.
If your writing is a personal journal, and if it is honest, you will
have to write about things that you find embarrassing to describe,
feelings you might not want to share, events that you wouldn’t
mention to strangers (or, perhaps, to anyone). Decide now what you
will do, before it happens.
Undressing, literally, figuratively, or emotionally, has always been
a powerful force in personal sites and web logs. Pictures don’t
matter in the long run; what matters is the trajectory of your
relationship with the reader, the gradual growth of intimacy and
knowledge between you.
9. Use your archives#section10
When you add something to the Living Web and invite others to link to
your ideas, you promise to keep your words available online, in their
appointed place, indefinitely. Always provide a permanent location (a
“permalink”) where each item can be found. Do your best to ensure
that these locations don’t change, breaking links in other people’s
websites and disrupting the community of ideas.
The promise to keep your words available need not mean that you must
preserve them unchanged. In time, you may find errors you want to
correct. The world changes, and things that once seemed clear may
require explanation.
Today, this permanent location is often a chronological archive, a
long list of entries for a particular week or month. These archives
are useful and easy to make. Many popular tools build chronological
archives automatically. But chronological archives are limited: you
might someday want to know what you wrote in May of 1999, but why
would anyone else care? Topical summaries and overviews are much more
helpful to new readers and to regulars alike, and if they require a
modest additional effort every day, that effort pays dividends that
grow as your archives expand.
New tools like Six Degrees and
Eastgate’s Tinderbox can make it
easier to keep track of categories, to find where new things fit and
to find old things that need new links. Topical archives are
Google’s natural friend. Remember that your old pages will often be
read by visitors from search engines; introduce yourself on every
page, and be sure that every page, however obscure, has links to tell
people:
- who you are, what you want, and why you’re writing
- your email address
- where to find your latest writing
Link to work you’ve already written – especially to good work that
you wrote long ago. Don’t be shy about linking to yourself: linking
to your own work is a service, not self-promotion.
10. Relax!#section11
Don’t worry too much about correctness: Find a voice and use it. Most
readers will overlook, and nearly all will forgive, errors in
punctuation and spelling. Leave Fowler and Roget on the shelf, unless
they’re your old friends. Write clearly and simply and write quickly,
for if you are to write often you must neither hesitate or quibble.
Don’t worry about the size of your audience. If you write with energy
and wit about things that matter, your audience will find you. Do
tell people about your writing, through short personal email notes
and through postcards and business cards and search engines. Enjoy
the audience you have, and don’t try to figure out why some people
aren’t reading your work.
Don’t take yourself too seriously.
Do let your work on the Living Web flow from your passion
and your play, your work life and your life at home. Establish a
rhythm, so your writing comes naturally and your readers experience
it as a natural part of their day or their week. But if the rhythm
grows onerous, if you find yourself dreading your next update or
resenting the demands of your readers, if you no longer relish your
morning web routine or your evening note-taking, find a new rhythm or
try something else. Change the schedule, or voice, or tone. Switch
topics. Try, if you can, to resist the temptation to drop things
entirely, to simply stop.
Don’t worry about those who disagree with you, and don’t take bad
reviews to heart. The web is filled with caring and kindness, but
thoughtless cruelty can and does cloud every writer’s spirit from
time to time. Ideas matter, but name-calling doesn’t, and petulant
critics wrap tomorrow’s virtual fish.
Good article. It was a bit on the common sense side, but then again ……
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URL: http://www.alistapart.com/stories/writeliving/
What is today? “16 August 2002—Issue No. 149”
Over the summer, ALA fell behind in its weekly production schedule due to a buttload of other projects. We compensated last week by publishing a day ahead of schedule, and we did the same thing this week. Moreover, it’s 16 August in Australia, and that’s good enough for us. We get a lot of Australian readers, and one of our co-producers is Sydney-based.
Now that we’ve cleared that up, how about this week’s article?
I think this article covers well the kinds of things most people who have spent any time with the “living web” feel but might have trouble articulating. These are good guidelines for effective, interesting, regularly updated content that will reach as wide a range as possible. On the other hand, I can’t bring myself to knock the ‘blogs and diaries and so forth that violate verious of these guidelines – the ones in which nobody but the author’s closest friends will be interested, for instance – because this is the web, and everyone has a right to do his or her own thing. So I guess the article covers not necessarily The Right Way To Make Good Content, but rather One Way To Make Better Content That More People Will Enjoy.
*deep breaths*
I particularly liked “If you are not sure you are right, ask yourself why you are writing” and “Decide now what you will do, before it happens” as guidelines.
I really do think that in all but the rarest of cases, this is what separates good content from drivel:
“Don’t tell us what happened: tell us why it matters.”
But I have a feeling that to really reach the people who need to hear this, I will have to pamphletize this article and hand it out hare krishna style (maybe near the blank CD shelf at the drug store?).
Nicely stated. A few helpful reminders for the hardcore blogger and some plain common sense for the newbie.
A very nice article…I think this it does a good job of really driving home the “Serve th Truth” point.
Good article. Omit unnecessary words. Good advice. I recommend George Orwell’s unfortunately titled article, “Politics and the English Language”, in which Orwell famously declares that “The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.”
Slick plug for tinderbox too.
Not only was this article a well written reminder, it was also an inspiration. I wrote a journal for three years that the “wrong” person once read. The journal was closed and now I hesitate to bring my most personal thoughts to my site. Maybe I’ll start bringing them again..
Let’s work on one of the 10 guidelines:
3. Write tight
Omit unnecessary words.
[Or as Strunk & White put it, “Omit needless words.”]
Choose a visual design that fits your voice. Unless the design is the point of your site, select colors and visual elements that support without dominating. [These two sentences say the same thing. Try “Unless visual design drives your site, choose a design to frame your writing and support your voice.”]
Resist the temptation to add features, for it is often best to use only those few technical and design elements that support your mission. Don’t rush to replace a good design: you will grow bored with it long before your readers do. [“Add only enough features to support the site, no more. Once you settle on a good design, leave it alone.”]
Read your work. Revise it. Don’t worry about being correct, …
[Do you mean grammatically correct? Factually correct? Why not worry about correctness? Poor spelling and grammar will only distract readers and reflect poorly on the writer. Factual errors call the writer’s veracity into question. Worry about correctness–the web doesn’t need more bad, incorrect writing.]
… but take a moment now and then to think about the craft.
[Better yet, read a lot. Read a book by an author you don’t know–pick something from the Booker or Pulitzer prize lists. Read one of those classics you bought Cliff’s Notes for in school. Read books about writing.]
Can you choose a better word — one that is clearer, richer, more precise?
[Try cutting down on the forms of “to be,” like “is,” “are,” “was.” Active writing with real verbs always reads better. “Can you choose a clearer, richer, more precise word?”]
Can you do without a word entirely? [Yes–the word “entirely” adds nothing to the preceding sentence.]
Omit unnecessary words. [And omit cliches.]
I mentioned George Orwell’s unfortunately titled article, “Politics and the English Language” above, but forgot to link it. Here is my overview and link to the article.
perhaps I should be doing some omitting right now… a robot ate my link the above post (which is why previews are great on forms). Here’s the link:
http://www.actsofvolition.com/index.cfm?section=board&id=322
The most authoritative instructional guide to blogging that I have read, because it emphasizes the importance of
1) maintaining rewarding relationships with an audience through the living web. It is true that the audience deserves more than drivel and should never suffer betrayal. Too often writers disappear and accordingly kill their readers, too.
2) maintaining an important relationship to one’s self as a writer by writing often to gain agility and by linking to previous posts to inspect progress and admit failure.
These two two concepts are basic instructions that a newbie like me never got. Thanks.
I wonder if Greg Jorgensen post above is using more than one tip from the article, namely numbers 3 AND 5.
I agree wholeheartedly. The author of this piece rambled, and used what Strunk and White would have termed ‘weak language’. Or was that Steven King? No matter. Jorgensen hit it on the head.
However, this writer did give me an AHA moment. He says “Seeking to exchange links without ideas is vulgarly known as blogrolling.” Thank you! Well said. I new there was a difference between good linking and blogrolling (I use harsher language on my own site) but it’s the best definition I’ve heard. It should be set in bold type!
This article made sense, not as tightly written as a similar bit by Dennis Mahoney, but then, few write like Mahoney. (Mahoney made me so disgusted with my own writing I quit for 5 months)
The thing that really stood out for me in the article was the comment about topical archives. I am currently using a chronological index but I am now inspired to implement a topical index as well.
I’ve just looked at the archive page for ala and noticed that they have a drop down topic selector that looks pretty cool. It certainly helps when you want to find several articles to look at rather than just look for a specific article.
Summation: topical archives are a good thing.
Nice to see a good guide to blogging, but as Jorgensen points out: too heavy. The writer’s passion about good writing causes him to lose sight of the strength of brevity and forcefulness.
I disagree about sex – everything you send on the Internet, whether Web traffic, e-mail, or ICQ chat, is recorded for later retrieval. Ten years from now you might be pursuing a job and not feel very good about a potential employer doing a search and pulling up your “night of the wet juices” piece. It also depends on what kind of journalism or experimental writing you are trying to master. I also dislike the “sex sells” message that, while true, is not necessarily in accord with the “be true to yourself” dictum.
Lastly, everything a decent writer spins should be correct with respect to grammar, punctuation, and style. There are no valid excuses for typos. I fail to understand why so many people regard the Web as a magic place in which the errors that would be impermissible in print are suddenly unleashed on a reading public. If you make lots of typos, practice typing. If your spelling is bad, study orthography. And read a style guide every now and then. I wouldn’t weasel on this one but I expect that the idea was to encourage writers to write and reduce the intimidation factor. Frankly, based on the number of “Here’s what I ate for breakfast” blogs out there, I wish more people WERE intimidated.
Thanks for a good blog.
Yeah, a great read which I think was needed to many, myself including, as a wakeup on the reality of bad writing.
I was an A grader in English at college, but I took a technical line as a carrer path and haven’t written for a while. I was rusty and really feel like my weblog has re-opened a door I was looking to open for a long time. It’s allowed me to write again, and not just for my own viewing. The article has great pointers I shall take heed of in my future writings.
Great!
My goal as a writer is a connection with passion, to make a change, as put by A List Apart : “Undressing, literally (no way..) , figuratively, or emotionally, has always been a powerful force in personal sites and web logs. Pictures don’t matter in the long run; what matters is the trajectory of your relationship with the reader, the gradual growth of intimacy and knowledge between you…” To me, this is very difficult, as you can tell by my Dog News log. The desire to remain anonymous overpowers my writing style. I have a fear of disclosure. Your tips are invaluable; I have a long, long ways to go.
Perhaps the most important thing is to have integrity, to be as honest as you can in your writing. Try to document every thing you write. I find I make mistakes and I am willing to correct them. It’s important to always go back and rethink an issue. Knowledge is power; that’s what writing exposes for others: links, resources, information and the power to unite behind a cause.
My goal as a writer is a connection with passion, to make a change, as put by A List Apart : “Undressing, literally (no way..) , figuratively, or emotionally, has always been a powerful force in personal sites and web logs. Pictures don’t matter in the long run; what matters is the trajectory of your relationship with the reader, the gradual growth of intimacy and knowledge between you…” To me, this is very difficult, as you can tell by my Dog News log. The desire to remain anonymous overpowers my writing style. I have a fear of disclosure. Your tips are invaluable; I have a long, long ways to go.
Perhaps the most important thing is to have integrity, to be as honest as you can in your writing. Try to document every thing you write. I find I make mistakes and I am willing to correct them. It’s important to always go back and rethink an issue. Knowledge is power; that’s what writing exposes for others: links, resources, information and the power to unite behind a cause.
I may sound foolish hear, but I came to this article expecting to find 10 tips and got, instead, ten short essays on writing for the web.
I think a bullet list would have sufficed.
Truth of the matter is that only the passionate reader can be bothered to read much of what’s on the screen – that’s the good thing about evolving content – you get a little something each day, barely even a half screenful.
This article is everything that web articles should avoid being… (in length terms). Other than that, it’s good advice 😉
When I said “hear” above… well, I meant “here” – if only we could go back and edit those things 😉
Truly a wonderful piece of writing. I thank you for giving me this to read.
Elegant is a word I learned in Programming which also applies here.
Before Y2K I used to write stuff like this
YYMMDD * 100.0001 = MMDDYY in which the fields had no decimal places.
Multiplying YYMMDD by 100 got MMDD00
Multiplying YYMMDD by 0.0001 got 0000YY
You see how it moves the whole number over?
For someone looking at the code
YYMMDD * 100.0001 = MMDDYY
was so elegant, obvious what the programmer was doing.
Unfortunately this kind of coding was not an efficient way to run on a computer. We not only want our code to be obvious, we also want it to run efficiently on our computers.
In this case, we want our text to run efficiently in the brains of the humans who look at it. Your article has elegance. I quoted extensively from it on my weblog.
http://radio.weblogs.com/0107846/2002/08/17.html#a87
I hope I was successful in making clear where the ideas came from, and what was quoted from where. This can be challenging when in my reality the path was: A List Apart; Mac Net Journal; dws Radio FAQ; Al Macintyre, with each of us annotating what we saw.
Quote:
For someone looking at the code
YYMMDD * 100.0001 = MMDDYY
was so elegant, obvious what the programmer was doing.
Er… no! Not elegant at all – in fact completely up its own rear end (and nor is it what I would call obvious). It assumes that you lose the decimal and truncate the whole part to its least significant 6 digits, and it takes a fair bit of explaining before you understood why it works. Do not confuse “elegant” with “smartarse”.
… of web attention span? I find myself skimming and scrolling, capturing only the first sentences of each paragraph to find what the “kernel of truth” was.
writing for the web, if of personal nature, is interpretive and subjective. maybe I don’t want to write about “why” but “what” and let my audience figure out their own “why’s.”
Jane
The advice offered here won’t come as any surprise to anyone who’s read Rebecca Blood’s book The Weblog Handbook, to which this article bears more than a passing resemblance.
http://www.rebeccablood.net/handbook/index.html
Great points, though I was expecting the usual #11 when dealing with advice of this nature:
11. Don’t let anyone tell you how to write.
I enjoyed Mark’s article. While I am not new to the Web, I am just starting writing for the Web (I have a project to publish a work on St. Augustine of Hippo and his relevance to modern political philosophy).
I would like to see more articles like this.
Re. your recommendation of tools; I would like to add:
TextPad (www.textpad.com) as a very good text editor
NoteTab (www.notetab.com) as the next best text editor
MyInfo 2 (www.milenix.com/index.php) as a very good ‘ideas processor’.
Ideas processors (or outliners) are a good tool for drafting any material for publication. They allow you to put your ideas together in a hierarchical tree and add text material to the idea nodes. For a comprehensive site on these tools see:
http://john.redmood.com/organizers.html and
http://www.outliners.com
Please do some more articles on this topic.
Regards,
Peter
From Section 10.
“Don’t worry too much about correctness . . . and nearly all will forgive, errors in punctuation and spelling. Leave Fowler and Roget on the shelf, unless they’re your old friends. . . . ”
This premise is somewhat incorrect as you are writing not only for your own visible language, where readers will see the context, but also for screen readers for the visually impaired or through translation engines where the particular “miss” will not be well understood.
And accessibility is part of Web Standards, is it not?
This article inspired me to renew the weblog I’d abandoned earlier this year; Not only that, but to commit to writing more meaningful prose. Thanks.
Thank you especially for calling writers on the rampant Unformed Opinion and Blogrolling syndromes!
However, I have a question about blogrolling. What constitutes vulgar – as you refer to it – blogrolling in your (formed!) opinion? I don’t suck up to big names hoping to get their attention, in fact I have only a few links listed on my blog’s “favorites” menu, and I’ve had conversations with most of the owners.
I give these sites permanent links because I’m convinced they’re able (and do) produce a consistent stream of good writing. Only a quarter of them link back, and I don’t care. So, does this evince that vulgar blogrolling is more of an idea or state of mind you should avoid than an actual practice? Or, am I a blogroller in denial? What exactly were you trying to suggest to writers in this regard?
I was provoked into thought by this article. I hadn’t previously considered writing about myself on my website. I thought at first the comments listed above were a little harsh, but I agree the text was rather long. Other than that, I thoroughly enjoyed it.
It will be a while before my writing style is up to scratch, but I intend to practise every day. I have a lot to write about. (Please visit my website if you are interested in music and electronic arts!)
Hmm. This article, it seems to me, isn’t just about blogging. There is a lesson for all content producers – all of whom need to establish a rapport with their visitors. Don’t too many sites seem to have been written ‘ for someone else’?
hey, just read a few of the articals. where have i been? why haven’t i seen this site before….sigh.
now, must make site better………
I would like to see some “Living” examples of what this article talks about. Does anyone have any links to sites that showcase some of this?
The article should have at least discussed the potential for today’s outburst to be enshrined forever in others’ citations, Google’s cache, or the WayBack Machine [http://www.archive.org/]. This may be a risk worth taking, but it is a risk. Bernstein’s message: Blog constantly, or as often as possible, and read other people’s blogs, but whatever you do, don’t stop. Maybe I’m cynical, but I wondered to what extent B’s interest in Tinderbox shaped his views. Yes, he does make good points; I especially liked “if you cannot face your mother, perhaps you are not ready to write for the world.” But his advice on style would go down better if he took more of it himself. I sorta wish Zeldman had written this piece, but maybe he already did: [http://www.alistapart.com/stories/zeldman2.html]
I like the fact that on ALA articles are produces that get into the art of content- writing next to artciles that get into design or technique. This tastes like there are more interesting articles to be published!
I would have recommended the writer of this piece to use his own guidelines for the article, because after number 6 or 7 I really had to push myself to keep reading. Engaging writing is not easy 😉
The Raven said in another reaction:
“Frankly, based on the number of “Here’s what I ate for breakfast” blogs out there, I wish more people WERE intimidated.”
I never grow tired of shouting back: “Don’t whine about that, just don’t read it!” Personal publishing is about freedom of speech, and if people want to write about their breakfasts they are entitled to do so. I have the freedom of choice what I want to read.
Martijn ten Napel:
“I never grow tired of shouting back: “Don’t whine about that, just don’t read it!” Personal publishing is about freedom of…”
However, Mark’s article was targeted toward people who wish to grow as writers, not diarists. There’s a great site for diarists, http://www.diarist.net/ .
The distinction here appears blurred for many because some diarists would really rather be writers and visa versa. If a writer (diarist) behaves narcissistically, he or she will only garner an audience who cares about what he had for breadfast.
This is a very niche demographic for which there’s no market.
Of course, everybody’s free, but the freedom argument only circumvents the real question, which is: Do you want to write with professional style that appeals to many, or do you want to write like a diarist that appeals to voyeurs?
Either is okay, and some may argue that there *is* at least a small market for the diarists, which is true; You can find published diaries at the bookstore.
But the what-for-breakfast diarists aren’t getting there. Everybody’s stuck with having to write something interesting if they want to write appealingly.
If freedom of speech feels like an issue, just remember that when writers like Mark write an article for writers, remember, he’s writing it for people who are free to write interestingly.
Diarists are free to check out http://www.diarist.net/ .
I got this tidbit from drop.org :
How Do You Establish Credibility For Your Web Site?
http://www.webcredibility.org/guidelines/index.html
Stanford have compiled 10 guidelines for building the credibility of a web site. These guidelines are based on three years of research that included over 4,500 people. (contributed by David Sim at ecademy.com August 19, 2002)
It all made sense.
It took me seconds to hit the click to go to the ‘Tips’ page but at least 5 different trys to get through the entire piece. While the idea of writing better blogs was evocative, the practice as described here was a bit dry.
For subjects such as this, I prefer writers who write short.
Thanks for the effort though. Hope it inspires me to do the same.
“Your mother, who never uses a computer, may read your intimate weblog one day in the library. To be honest with the world, you may need to be honest with your mother; if you cannot face your mother, perhaps you are not ready to write for the world.”
I like the article and the advice it gives.
I think I understand the above quote and offer this commentary:
The author may be assuming someone is reading your blog and/or website simply because it exists. From my experience (not a blog) this isn’t the case– promotion of a website through links, friends, and search engines make a site known. This is one of the primary false Web Myths– If you build the site, the visitors will come.
So it isn’t automatic that everyone, let alone your mother is reading your site, regardless of the quality of the content.
Some people have cool and mature relationships with their mother and some have quite less than that or maybe no mother. When the question of personal expression factors your mother that seems good IF you don’t mind communicating with her. If you want to complain about your mother you should be able to do that too. I don’t think one should worry about what mother thinks! The metaphor may cause more self-censorhip than interesting content.
My point is that maybe facing the Self is most important when writing, drawing, or whatever medium you are using. Do you have a vested interest in what you are writing? (that’s one of my highschool english teachers lines)
What in the world is the blue picture behind the title of this article? I have been starting at it for 10 minutes and can’t figure it out.
I wasn’t going to say anything, but…
*nods understandably*
Nothing says “I don’t care about my readers” better than a top ten list. Perhaps there should be a #11, Use Your Imagination. We’ve seen the Top Ten list in David Letterman’s show. Even there it was not funny, interesting, whatever. Lose it.
You can pay attention to any or all of these options or you can be yourself and write whatever you want. What is so wrong with writing as if NO ONE is reading (a la “dance like no one is watching”)? There are no guidelines for “weblogging” (what a horrible term). And anyone who thinks there are guidelines for this pseudo-phenomenon really needs to lighten up before it’s killed. What’s with the control trip? I’ve had my journal up for over a year, I’ve written by the seat of my pants. That’s how I’ve always written. Trust me, articles like this are only the first step to the Blog Police and might alienate new bloggers because they don’t feel like they can follow the “rules” and be true to themselves. People who think we need rules for blogging/journalling are absolute control freaks, not writers. Don’t be fooled! The last thing we need in the realm of FREE EXPRESSION are rules. Am I the only one who knows this? I hope not.
Mark, many comments have been made, most of which I find valid. However, to write consistently and with the passion you set as the prerequisite for writing that lives, I would suggest nit-pickers first master the myriad elements covered here. It’s a lifelong craft, a journey of continually learning and re-learning to better articulate the honest and the obvious so that we are more easily able to find that which we hide from ourselves. The ten points you cover here encompass myriad smaller, but no less important insights, offering a comprehensive but distilled template for writing one’s self into being.
I was alerted to this article by someone who shares my loathing for the abuse of the English language. He specifically refered me to Point 10 where, to paraphrase, you suggest that correct spelling, punctuation etc are not all that important. As I replied on another site, if your advice revolved around dating tips directed to a young man, the offensive section might have read:
“Don’t worry too much about personal hygiene. Find a woman and pursue her. Most dates will overlook, and nearly all will forgive, horrendous breath and body odor. Leave shampoo and deodorant on the shelf unless they’re old friends. Bathe quickly and dress thoughtlessly for if you are to score often, you must not waste time on presentation or consideration of others.”
Imagine my surprise when, having posted this, I follow up and read the entire article and find it to be thoroughly (almost) on the mark in every aspect. I would have even agreed with that one section had you said “Don’t worry OVERLY-much about…” in the sense that an exaggerated concern over precise correctness is likely to prompt a person not to write at all.
Regarding how too many people tend to write on the net today, whenever I see someone write, for example, “whats there problem? thats what the nets 4.” or some such trash, I immediately judge the person to be someone who obviously has nothing to say that might be of the slightest interest to me. Yes, I’m sure I miss out on a gem or two this way but that’s just the way it is.
Thanks 98% for a great article!
A long time ago in a distant university, I wrote some Fortran. I thought it was SO cool: a clever way to do two things at the same time. I was proud of it, until an older and wiser programmer set me straight.
It was hard to understand. It was not clear. If I read it now, it would confuse me too.
That day I learned a lesson. Code, like anything else, should make sense even if you’re not inside the author’s head.
If it gives you insight into the author’s mind, that’s a bonus. If it REQUIRES insight into his mind, it has failed.
Judging by my Fortran, my mind must have been a scary place. Perhaps it still is. But these days, people often understand what I write.
And I like that better than being “clever”.
PD.
You might wonder what triggered my previous outburst — more likely, you didn’t care. But if you are getting a sinking feeling, it’s fully justified. I AM going to tell you what I was writing about.
A page or so ago, I read:
> For someone looking at the code
> YYMMDD * 100.0001 = MMDDYY
> was so elegant, obvious what the programmer was doing.
so I replied. Then I noticed that the conversation had moved on.
In the immortal words of Matt Groening: “Doh!”
So now I’ll move even further back — thanks for the orignal article. It made me think. Mostly it made me think I don’t need to write a blog. I have nothing passionate to say, right now. A one-man crusade against grocers’ apostrophes doesn’t quite stir the blood. My ire is not yet kindled. I have not waxed wroth. I am perfectly calm (though my teeth are slightly gritted as I type this).
Besides, apostrophe.org is taken. The world is safe from my prose for a little longer.
PD.
Obviously it’s good to have input (even in the broad manner afforded by sites such as ala) from as many people as possible, but the scope for such articles is considerably degraded by repetition: I felt much of what was said by Mark Bernstein, was also said by Dennis A. Mahoney in issue 138, albeit in a slightly less economic manner. Other than that, I thought it to be a very well written, comprehensive and sensible piece; although not particularly enlightening on a personal level.
I realise that I am probably as well-placed as the next man to make demands of people; but how about some anaylsis of the struggling levels of compliance amongst the W3Cs flagship members?
Thanks for the good advice here. I am not sure, this being my first page, of what is good to write. I try to be honest, usually with my writing anywhere i let my voice in my head come out on the web page. I’ve found several good ideas and pages just searching around. I dont think that any of the writing there was too heavy, or incorrect. Take out of it what you need, i am assuming that is why it was there. Thanks to the writers.
Sorry, but I have to say I disagree with the idea in “2. Write often” :
“If you cannot write for a time, and the reason for your absence is interesting, write about it. Your honeymoon, your kidney transplant, your sister’s gubernatorial inauguration — all these can be predicted and worked into the fabric of your writing so that the interruption, when it comes, seems natural. But avoid, if you can, sudden cryptic pronouncements: “I’ll be unable to post for a while”? gives us nothing we can use or learn from.”
From a security point of view, this is really stupid. You write “I’ll be away in Jamaca for 2 weeks on Saturday”, hacker thinks “hmm, 2 weeks to break in and mess up their site”, and burgaler checks your domain whois for your address, breaks in and steals the entire contents of your house. May as well leave the keys under the doormat as well.
Or maybe I’m paranoid…
oh, and this forum is weird. Whats with all the “I’ll “I’ll “Iâ€â€œI’l“I’ll ??
Plus, as noted by someone above, the “Post A Message:” at the bottom of EVERY page is misleading, really easy for a newcomer or forgetfull regular to make a post relating to the last post at the bottom of a given page, only to find it 2 or 3 pages away once posted. There you go, two bugs to sort out…
Um .. what IS that graphic behind the title of the article? Looks like a diagram of the top part of the female reproductive system. Is that a Fallopian tube to the left?
A “Womb of the Living Web” theme perhaps? 🙂
Yes, I just now made that EXACT error regarding the “Post A Message” at the bottom of the first page. Only after my post “failed” to appear did I notice there were more pages of posts … after some frantic skimming, I was much relieved to see that pure luck prevented me from making the newbie error of asking a question that had already been answered.
Very nice article, it makes me think that this responds to the need of “human-like-interactivity”. I enjoy websites that makes me think that there’s somebody on the other side, alive, of course 🙂
mmmm… real nice article! I enjoyed reading it and will start writing more often. I have been thinking about this for a while actually but am really inspired now. Thanks for putting up such a lovely article.
I think these, like all other rules, are stupid. You’re starting to sound like fukcing Jakob. Sheesh. Of course I agree with much of this, except not in the form of rules, simply preferences. There are many ways, and I mean, come on: “be sexy” and “post often” are just fukcing idiotic. So is the admonition that online writers (esp. webloggers) have some obligation to their readers.
To quote Karl Hagen: “Our rules and systems are arbitrary, and to claim for them some moral or logical superiority has never withstood the scrutiny of debate.”
Love, despite,
Joe Mexico
http://meltingobject.blogspot.com
i thought it was a bit inappropriate for the author of article to mention archiving systems, including the one made by the company for which he works (tinderbox) without a disclaimer to that effect. had he disclaimed his relationship with the product, i wouldn’t have thought twice about his relationship to the material, but now i wonder if this was intended to be one big advertisement about starting a great blog or online writing center, and then using the terrific tinderbox product to manage it!
just my thoughts. who is the ombudsman here, anyway?
“But what keeps readers coming back is compelling writing that’s __continually fresh and new__.”
*-*/
There’s some good advice in this article, some bad advice and some decidedly odd advice (“Don’t tell us your opinion: tell us why the question is important” – put forward a question but don’t try and answer it?!? why would that be a good thing?). The article also rambles on a bit, which is kind of ironic I guess…
maybe it’s irony on a base level, but i like it. reason i’m complaining is i was hoping to test the feature in mozilla that checks pages for updates and automatically opens the page…maybe i’ll try slashdot
As many has allready mentioned, the stuff explained in this article isn’t new to most people, but it’s those things many people forget to do when running a weblog or another text-content based website.
On a different note. Something makes the charset mess up in this comment section. when people write “DON’T” it inserts questionmarks and other strange charactors around the ‘ . I’ll make a screenshot and post it later. I’m too tired right now.
This article got me sacked!
Well, almost. I read it and thought how it could be applied on our site, then I realised my boss would never understand/care/take an interest because he really hasn’t a clue (he’s an accountant) and this made me mad, so I said my job was a joke (on my blog) and got sacked.
So now I’m jobless because of your well written, well thought out article on ALA – thanks a bunch!
Good essay, but should be edited down by two-thirds. Time is money.
“Updating daily (or weekly) content can challenge the most dedicated scribe or site owner (even A List Apart).”
is u ! ?
Am I JACOB Neilsen OR NOT!!?
http://ami.iamcal.com/index.php?site=Jakob+Nielsen
I loved reading “write for a reason”. I am passionate about what i write, and have always written that way. I just loved everything it had to say, and the great tips it had to offer. this is my first time here, but it wont be the last. Thanks so much to my teacher who MADE us go to this site :o). (dont you just love it).
“YYMMDD * 100.0001 = MMDDYY”
As Ashley said, that is not correct. I get “YYMMDDYY.MMDD”
I wold like to join
“YYMMDD * 100.0001 = MMDDYY” provided you define your field as 6 digits no decimal.
“YYMMDDYY.MMDD” uses an output field of 8 digits in front of the decimal and 4 after.
But if you make your output six in front of the decimal, with no rounding, and that is all, then the unwanted parts fall off.
This is elegant from perspective of easy to read the code.
It is not elegant from perspective of someone verifying it … if we messed up with placement of ones and zeros, a human being eyeballing the code would see what we doing, but not that we doing it wrong.
It is not elegant from perspective of how some computers internally operate.
Since Y2K moved me to CCYYMMDD format (the C for Century), I have found other ways to do date math, and avoid this risk of a typo.
I like this article. Yes, it was long, but easy to read. Especially first three-four tips were very useful. I disagree with opinion about spelling mistakes and grammar errors. I don’t like them, because from my point of view they decrease readability of material.
Nepto
I find the imperative really, really annoying in otherwise-valuable articles like this. My instinctive reaction to sentences like “If you are writing for the Living Web, you must write consistently. You need not write constantly, and you need not write long, but you must write often.” is “bite me”.
The only rule on the Living Web is “you must write whatever the hell you feel like writing, whenever the hell you feel like writing it.” By giving orders to the contrary, Mark just comes off sounding snooty.
If they hadn’t been phrased as imperatives liberally salted with “must”s, many of these bits of advice would have been useful. “If you want people to keep coming back to your site, it will help if you write consistently, so it won’t happen very often that they come in expecting something new, and are disappointed.” But it’s not a “must”; if your writing is good enough, people will set page-minders on you, and will eagerly go and read when they get the change notification, even if the time interval isn’t predictable.
And maybe you don’t _care_ whether or not thousands of people keep coming back. How do I reconcile all these “musts” with “you are, in the end, your most important reader”?
“Never waffle, whine, or weasel.” What, never? So people who are naturally whiny weasels should just stay the heck off of the Living Web, or should at least never show that side of themselves? They should leave the place to us perfect types who can always avoid doing those things?
“Understand the storyteller’s art and use the technique of narrative to shape the emerging structure of your living site.” And if you don’t have the time or the inclination to study the storyteller’s art, just shut the heck up?
“If you are writing in order to discover your mind or to try out a new stance, continue by all means— but file the note in your desk drawer, not on your website.” Utter drivel. I _like_ to read people trying out new stances and discovering their own minds. I dunno why Bernstein doesn’t, but I resent him trying to forbid people from doing it.
“Disagreement is exciting.” I found this article very exciting. *8)
DC
as a computer geek and former english major in university,
i fiind it ironic that we are attempting to finite the pattern of speech that has the potential to glorify these pages. if we will assume that the internet is the wild,wild west, then let the conversation on these pages
flow with the same untamed abandoment as john wayne in true grit.
Very nearly the definition of self-indulgence.
Wow…maybe I’ve just been out of the loop of writing for a while, but a lot of what was said really hit home for me. The whole time I was thinking, “Damn straight! I’m not a pussy, I can write! I think I will!” Thanks for the wake up call…it was oodles of helpful info!
EVERY premise in this article was echoed in my creative writing and playwriting classes in college — some of these lessons I still haven’t quite learned, but getting there.
Moral: Hammer hammer it in. Eventually, it will sink in.
This may be inferred in the article but I find that keeping a blog brief is crucial to its quality. Many people can write some good stuff that just goes on and on and on. Break it up with some “headlines” or something within the big block of text to show a new thought or new idea. I find many blogs just hard to read.
Imagine this article without the bold, numbered headers to each new aspect of the content. It would be much more difficult to read, as many blogs are. Remember that you are writing for the WEB and not for print. Jakob Nielsen would smile right now :o)
A lot of common sense but very useful common sense.
Thank you for this effort to improve writing on the web, especially in blogs.
Great tips on writing blogs.
11. Find a good ears
Hi david.. i one hundred percent agree with you… web is a medium of free expression.. there’s ‘NO’ musts..
long live free internet..
rk//
you all sound like god damn smart asses to me?! this was created for your use you dont HAVE to use it you dont HAVE to critisise it?! Somebody probably worked hard on it!
Jeri Fallaize
——x——
Wow! There’s a lot to think about!!
And it will be hard to use all these hints in a good way!
But it’s great to have some “guidelines” to make a good publication.
I started my own weblog (http://hotopblog.antville.org) in december last year. Now (hopefully) I will improve my efforts… Thanks a lot!!
Matthias
11. Identify plugs in the body of your text, not in an end note.
I believe that this article goes well beyond pure common sense. I’m a newbie at weblogging and will most certainly spread the word to friends to read this. Sometimes we forget don’t understand the simplest things in writing that matter, and through this article I discovered some of my flaws in writing and learned new things about friends and writing with a sense of ‘why should the reader care? I hope I can one day contribute to this truly amazine site I discovered through A LINK IN ANOTHER SITE.
nice article. i started mine some 3 months ago.: [http://www.duelcom.com/malani/]
I was certainly inspired and educated by this article. I actually found it by following a link on a Blog I read regularly…one the writer has not found obviously.The link was for http://www.realworldstyle.com and they linked here…anyway I digress.
I am surprised at all the criticism, but it is interesting to read. I do try to use a spellchecker on my blog, as it distracts me to see spelling errors when I read anything.
This site is definately going into my favorites list and may even find a link on my website.
Thanks for the effort and the inspiration.
I enjoyed the article. It was a good refresher for me on writing. I would like to hear your thoughts on writers block expanded more and how to find inspiration. That would be an interesting discussion/conversation.
Ron
Power Tools for Webmasters
Get you site featured at
http://webmastertoolbox.net
This article is awesome. It is what inspired me to improve my writing, and it (and its follow-up) continue to be my refreshers everytime I feel I’m losing the plot as far as writing goes. Thank you very much, ALA, for the articles.
After reading some of these comments, however, I’m slightly confused. Perhaps I’m interpretting the article wrong, but I took tip 10 (RE not worrying about correctness) to mean that your first priority is getting the message across instead of getting led astray by strict details of i’s before e’s and semicolons? Maybe the author could clarify if he is not too busy?
I do feel that improvements could have been made to both this article and its follow-up (particularly in the follow-up), where more examples of elegant writing could be given, more examples of “right” and “wrong” and “what sells” and “what smells”. But I guess those must be things we are to figure out on our own…?
Thanks again, ALA, for your inspiration and guidance.
Xiu.
http://www.sanlive.com
— fruit of the mind.
fdhdfhdfghdfgh
The author has clarity in his words. Although there are a little too many words, I can still see his points very well. A great and helpful (to me) job.
Thanks for keeping your archives available (as you suggest in the article). I’m obviously a lagger, but I appreciate the article. Very nice.
I’m working up to a bit of weaving, now I have leisure.
This article is clear and helpful, and I shall be guided by it.
The “Living Web” is like a guilt-free version of those Christmas letters we all hate. Guilt-free because we don’t send it to anyone, but anyone can read it; and if we make it interesting, maybe someone will.
The best tips on web writing, and general writing for that matter, that I have ever seen. Mr. Bernstein, the next time you are in Philadelphia, I would love to feed you and introduce you to interesting people.
wow.. at first everything aformentioned seemed very obvious, but after a thorough read, there are deeper meanings buried within it. I’ve had my personal website since 1999. What started out as a journal of my adventurous dating life turned into a daily chore. So i stopped completely, and needless to say, to many of my reader’s disappointment. Through the years i have tried to start it up again. but always running into the same wall. Lately I decided to try yet again. And decided to write about deeper things in life, i mean, after all, i AM getting older.
THis article has cemented my desire to make my efforts last. I will surely re-read it when the next time i hit the wall.