The Web is a pretty relaxed place, and no-one really gets too hung up on "correct" use of English, but not everyone's content makes sense because people often forget some of the simplest rules of the language. If your content doesn't make sense (if you say "was" instead of "were" for example, or you capitalise random words or forget to format your text), it might make sense to you and to many others, but little wrinkles like that can become a minefield for those for whom English is not their first language, or for people using screen readers or text-only browsers.
Because I love writing for the Web and reading what others have written, I thought I'd present my Three Pillars to Better Online Writing. Please note, I'm not trying to wag my finger at anyone or be a grammar bully, but if we all obey a few simple rules, it makes reading people's content a lot easier.
It's worth mentioning before we get into the nitty-gritty that you probably know most, if not all of this stuff already, so if I'm telling you stuff you already know I apologise, but read on because even some of the Web's best writers think that something can be "different than" something else (it can't), so who knows what you might pick up!
Pillar #1: Remember your English lessons
There are three points that make up this pillar: spelling, grammar and semantics. There's really no reason why spelling mistakes should exist on the Web as everyone who has access to the Internet has access to a spell checker. If you're in doubt about a particular word, just Google it and you'll find out instantly whether you're right or not. If the content management system you're using doesn't come with a spell checker and you're using IE, there's always IESpell. One quick point to note about spell checkers is to ensure you've set it to the correct language. By default it'll probably set itself to US English which is different to UK English, mostly because they use the letter Z a lot more than we do.
Grammar is a much greyer area, so the best way to make sure you're writing content that makes sense is to read it out loud. If it makes sense when spoken out loud, then it should make sense on paper. Don't get bogged down trying to achieve perfect grammar, as very few of us actually construct sentences the way we technically should. I certainly don't know whether that last sentence contained a subject, object and verb, and if you ask me about predicates or interjections my eyes will glaze over. Also, don't take your word processor's grammar checker as gospel: it's nearly always either wrong or irrelevant.
Semantics is where people really start to have trouble. Put simply, I'm talking about putting the right words in the right context to make your sentence understandable. The most common problem people face is that of telling the difference between words like there, their and the abbreviation they're. Because they sound the same people get into the habit of using the simplest or most common word (there) in all cases, but that's just lazy! If you're not completely sure of your use of these words, you could try better-english.com's There/Their/They're test. Some useful tips to bear in mind here:
- Remember that words like you're and they're are abbreviations of "you are" and "they are" respectively, so if you want to use a shortcut, pick the one with the apostrophe.
- Also it's is an abbreviation for "it is" (ie: "it's...Monty Python's Flying Circus!"), whereas its means "property of it" (ie: "Monty Python had its own style", because the style belonged to it).
It might seem like a bit of effort for just a quick blog post, but today's quick blog post is tomorrow's longer article, and there's no reason not to take an extra five minutes to make sure you're writing stuff that makes sense. Remember, it's not about being correct, it's about being understood.
Pillar #2: Presentation
HTML gives us a lot of neglected formatting tools to help us ensure our content reads well.
- Use tags like
,
and
to separate out section headings (use
for the page heading, then
for subheadings etc). Making your text bold doesn't mean anything, especially if some of your readers use text-to-speech browsers.
- If you're writing a bulleted or numbered list, use the
or
tags respectively.
- Long quotes, addresses and HTML snippets for examples all have their own tags, so use them!
A note for developers: this may sound like old news to you, but ask your clients and you'll be surprised how many people aren't aware that HTML documents have a set structure. This is simply because we don't tell them; we just expect them to know somehow.
If you're copying and pasting from another document, make sure the line breaks are correct. I won't go into detail because this can become a real nest of vipers, but if you can highlight the space in-between two paragraphs in your text editor, you're using the wrong line-break. To fix it, just remove the break then add it back in again by pressing the ENTER or RETURN key once.
Another bunch of important rules, in brief are:
- Italic text is better than CAPITALS when emphasising a point)
- Stay away from your text editor's underline button (only links should be underlined, and that's for the page template or style sheet to decide)
- Try not to use slashes when you mean to say "or" and ampersands (& signs) when you mean "and". These abbreviations make your post sloppy, because it looks as though you're rushing. (Exceptions are short phrases or names like "and/or" and "M&S").
- Try and use only one or two sentences per paragraph.
- Don’t capitalise entire sentences manually (this should be done via a style sheet)
The following points could go into the first pillar, but strictly speaking they're presentation issues, so here goes:
- Only titles, sentences and "proper nouns" (like names of people or places) begin with capital letters: nothing else. Proper nouns also include days of the week and month names.
- Plurals don’t have apostraphes after them, even if the word ends in a vowel (ie: “Can we have two more menu’s please?” doesn’t need the apostraphe). That character is reserved for abreeviations and to denote ownership, ie:
- “the cat’s asleep” [abbreviation of “the cat is alseep...”], or
- “the cat’s whiskers” [abbreviation of “the whiskers of the cat”]
- You don't add a space before a punctuation mark (for example: "hi mate !" should read "hi mate!")
- Spaces go after punctuation marks (for example "Hi.How are you?" should read "Hi. How are you?')
Pillar #3: Your audience
Try to keep your reader in mind with every word you write. Just like radio, you're not speaking to a multitude: people don't read blog posts all huddled together round a computer monitor, so keep it personal.
Also, think about whether the words and phrases you use will be understood by your reader. Try not to patronise him/her either - rich coming from me, I know - by telling them stuff they already know. (A useful tip: if you think they already know it, say "I know you probably already know this but". A little empathy can go a long way!)
Try to keep things as short as you can. Your latest post might only be one stop on the way for a busy reader who's checking up on his RSS feeds for the morning, so if you can say what needs to be said in one sentence, say it; we get no prizes for our word counts in this game!
In his post on blog etiquette, Kevin Rapley talks about using and attributing outside sources. If someone's said something already, link to it rather than paraphrase it: this helps keep your post brief and gives the reader the chance to make a decision about whether he or she wants to delve deeper.
As I've already said: blogs are (usually) personal, so try to reflect that in your language. Talk about yourself and don't be afraid to use humour if that's how you'd normally communicate.
Conclusion
As I mentioned at the top of this post, my aim isn't to tut at the fact that no-one seems to be able to write anymore, and I know this has probably come across as incredibly patronising and for that I apologise, but I justify it by saying that, if you can make your posts easy, quick and enjoyable to read, you'll see the benefits of it. People like to read well-written content and to pass it along, so there's really no harm in just dotting the Is and crossing the Ts.
Happy blogging!
