Internet Writing Styles

Almost everybody has read a newspaper or a magazine at some point in their life. If you are reading this now, you are obviously familiar with the fact that there is a lot of information to be read online as well. What you may not be so readily familiar with unless you have looked for it specifically is that the vast majority of the information online is written in a substantially different manner than the content that is written for print publications.

There are certainly exceptions, especially online but that does not change what has proven to be the most effective after nearly twenty years of testing and growth. Print publications are generally restricted to reporting facts and information (at least ostensibly) while most online publications make every effort to establish a "personal" and real relationship with their readers. This is not in any small part due to the ability of the people to interact when using online materials and web sites. Whatever the individual reasons may be, the writing styles online must be different than those that are used in more traditional media formats.

Writing to the people online generally requires you to address them personally and not speak in the more "professional" third person tone used in most print publications. However, there is much more to the difference of styles online than simply the manner of writing. A good number of people reading information online will scan the article more than they will actually read it. If you do not think so, look at your stats and look at the amount of time people generally spend reading each page that they visit.

Generally they will make an initial scan of the page they visit. That gives you somewhere around seven to ten seconds to get their attention. If they see anything in the opening that piques their interest they are likely to scan the entire page and may spend one-half to one full minute on that page. In order to retain your readers interest and allow them to get more information from your site, this calls for you to make additional adjustments to your online writing style.

There are times and occasions when bolding or highlighting certain points will work and there are times when it will not. If you have a sales page this may very well work for you. However, if you have a news or informative web site, you probably will not want all of this cluttering up your page as it is not conducive to keeping readers for longer periods of time but in fact, urging them to scan your highlights and ignoring much of the rest of the page.

In traditional print publications, paragraphs are generally broken apart by ideas with an introduction, a body and a closing and sometimes even including a short lead-in to the next paragraph. Online, your paragraphs should each include one brief idea and be kept as short as possible. By writing in such a manner, people will be able to scan your pages, still get lots of information and will be much more likely to come back and see your site again once more information is posted.

Another key factor to keep in mind when writing online content is that not many people are going to want to spend precious minutes on your site even if the information you have is outstanding and unavailable anywhere else. Keep your online content concise and to the point. As a rule you will want to keep your articles down somewhere around five-hundred words. If it is in regards to a subject that may take substantially more room to cover, you may want to break it apart into different sections. Part One, Part Two, Part Three, etc, etc et al will help you to allow your readers to absorb the information at their own leisure and not force them to waste their time on a single page.

If they have to come back to the same page, try to figure out where they stopped before and then take up the arduous task of reading on further, they are most likely just not to come back at all. However, if you have the content broken up into sections, they would be very likely to come back and read the second, third or even the fourth sections at a later date as they have the time to do so. Again, this is in order to generate return traffic to your site so that you can accomplish whatever your personal goals are with your web site.

There are many subtle nuances that must be taken into consideration when writing online content that can never be explained fully but must be experienced to be understood. If you have been working online for any great length of time, perhaps you know many of them that you never even consciously think about but you know to be true. If you are new to the Internet, try some testing and see what your results are and you will likely find that many of the different online writing styles are there for a reason ... mostly because they are what work.

When you hire a writer, you need to hire someone that is equally understanding of what works and what does not for your personal site and can make any necessary adjustments without having to take time out of your busy schedule to baby sit them while they learn at your expense what will work and what will not.