Write for Skimmers

A.J. Kohn, of the excellent Blind Five Year Old blog, published a post yesterday called Stop Writing for People.

The title caught my eye because it seemingly flies in the face of ‘conventional’ wisdom about writing for the web

As I read the post, though, I found myself agreeing with A.J. Anyone who’s been doing web copywriting or search engine optimization has seen the never-ending admonishments to write for people, not for search engines.

Not bad advice, necessarily, but it neglects to take into consideration one very important fact about those human readers – namely, that they don’t actually read.

Highlighting this point, Kohn cites statistics from usability guru Jakob Nielsen showing that a huge percentage (79%, to be specific) of test users always scanned – not read word for word – any new page they came across.

‘Writing for Users’ Can Be a Mistake
The Blind Five Year Old post goes on to point out that the de-facto ‘rule’ of writing for readers and not for search engines leads many online content developers astray. They mistakenly assume they have to craft content the way they’d write a novel.

There’s no denying that being able to tell a compelling story is important, but since web users aren’t actually reading but rather skimming, a good portion of that carefully constructed prose is missed.

This is especially true if there are no visual cues (bullets, bolding, paragraph titles, word repetition, images) to help readers easily see if the page has what they’re looking for.

So while A.J. is not suggesting (nor am I) that you shouldn’t take care in developing content that users will find worthwhile, he is driving home a point that is all too frequently lost in the standard “write for humans” suggestions when it comes to web content development. Perhaps a better (if more convoluted) way of saying it is to “write for humans who aren’t reading word for word.”

Get Me Out of Here!
Have you ever landed on a webpage with loads of dense content? I don’t know about you, but my instinct is to hit the back button immediately. If I can’t find what I’m looking for on a quick scan, my concern is that the information may not be there at all. I don’t want to spend 10 minutes (or even 2 minutes) reading something that may not solve my problem.

Keep A.J.’s points in mind as you build out your online content. Understand what works online, and don’t forget that, in most cases, you have another ‘reader’ to consider – search engines. Spending hours crafting quality content that no one ever finds isn’t that rewarding, so understand the role that search engine optimization plays in your writing, too.

To Break The Rules You First Have to Know Them
Writing for the web can be dramatically different than writing for other mediums. Partly because of readers’ tendency to scan instead of read, web writing is frequently more casual, even conversational. Elementary-school rules of grammar are often broken in favor of clear, direct writing that engages readers.

However, to make your web writing compelling while still maintaining a level of professionalism, it’s important that you understand that some rules are STILL not meant to be broken.

Joe Hall wrote about this last year on the Marketing Pilgrim blog, in a post called Lady Gaga Understands the Fundamentals and So Should You! (Side note: unintentionally hilarious ending to the video in this post, which shows Lady Gaga performing BEFORE she was Lady Gaga. One of the comments from a person in the audience is, “Norah Jones – watch out!” I’m not sure the two of them are competing for listeners any longer.)

Getting a little more specific, I believe that the following rules STILL apply to writing for the web:

• Misspellings call your intelligence and credibility into question. Period. Not everyone is a great speller, but virtually everyone has access to spell check. If you’re an extraordinarily bad speller, find a proofreader you can trust.
• Very infrequent use of slang, or phonetic spelling can work, but only if it’s clear that it was intentional. ‘Nuff said.
• Choosing the wrong word makes you look silly. If you’re not 100% sure if you’re using a word in the proper context, for heaven’s sake, don’t use it. Better still, look up the definition; you just might learn something!
• Even worse than using the wrong word is making up a word, unless you’re a well-known politician, in which case you may – however inadvertently – coin a whole new word. (See Word of the Year – ‘refudiate’ – via Sarah Palin.)
• Some rules of punctuation can’t be broken, even online. Not sure if you should use a semi-colon there? Don’t. (If you hate semi-colons, you’re in good company, even if you don’t have as permanent a reason as Naomi.  If you  actually like semi-colons as I do, there’s a shirt for you.
• Leaving out punctuation that is necessary to make your thoughts clear creates confusion. Take a look at the ‘Let’s eat Gradma!’ or ‘Let’s eat, Grandma!’ Punctuation Saves Lives Facebook Fan Page for some entertaining examples. I also highly recommend Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss for an amusing take on the importance of punctuation.
• Run-on sentences violate the central tenet of rule-breaking on the web by making content harder, rather than easier, to read. Three distinct thoughts run together without punctuation is like deciphering a haiku. If I’m already barely reading, what are the odds I’m going to stop and try to figure out what you’re saying? Pretty much zero, I’d say.

The Golden Rule when it comes to writing for the web is simply this: Your readers have expectations and behave in a certain way (scan, not read), so it’s your job to adapt to them. Always keep that in mind as you write anything designed to be read online.