Activity

Take some tips from technical writing that may make your ideas clear and persuasive in the brand new reading environment of the web.

Print media puts the reader in the passenger’s seat. Imagine if you don’t want a character to die? What if you don’t just like the direction the story has had? Traditional reading is linear–you start at chapter one and you also visit the end, without detours in between.

write for us technology have always been different. Who reads instruction manuals from starting to end? Instead you dip into it, try something, and if that doesn’t seem to work, flip several pages backward or forward and try again.

Now the internet has become a huge manual where in fact the reader can move around at will–technology has stolen authorial control. You have to expect your readers to jump around. To be successful, anything you write for the net has to follow exactly the same three rules that technical writers use:

Write in Chunks

Readers choose. Recognize that your audience is not expecting a story–they have specific goals. Points have to be self-contained and clearly marked to greatly help them find what they’re searching for and move ahead. Respect your reader’s time–don’t make sure they are eat the sundae when all they need is the cherry.

Follow a Structure

You can structure your content by category, rank, location–but there has to be a structure. By organizing your information you are giving your reader an instrument that lets them find what they’re searching for and skip what they don’t really need. If you cannot find a structure that works, you need to define your points more clearly.

Connect it Together

You can’t force your reader to check out the road you’ve set for them, nevertheless, you can give them usage of information that supports your message. Don’t be afraid to link, both to resources outside your document also to pages in it. Your role would be to help them achieve their goals; point them towards resources that help them do this.

Like technical writing, the internet is approximately helping people find information. Adopt a few of the principals of technical writing in your own work to create it get results.