Writing for the web is different from academic, technical, and other forms of writing with which you may be familiar. When people search for information online, they want information presented to them in an easy-to-read, easy-to-understand, and authoritative manner.
Think about your own online experiences. When you search for information, how do you discern if an article or blog post is worth reading? How do you decide if it’s trustworthy? What is it about any given article that prompts you to read through it—from the first sentence to last?
While there are many reasons articles can be appealing (or unappealing) to online audiences, the best web articles share certain qualities in common.
The Quality Standards:
• Authority: With so much information on the internet, people won’t spend time on anything that doesn’t sound trustworthy and feel authoritative. While these articles are not meant to be academic papers, they still need to contain substantial, specific, and researched pieces of information connected by clear logic.
• Readability: Does the way you write make a reader’s job hard, or easy? Online, readers abandon articles that are not easy to read. Sentence structure, stylistic choices, and use of transitions will make or break the reader’s experience. Sentences that are concise, specific, and well-phrased enhance a piece’s readability.
• Organization: Articles with strong structure are almost always immediately more accessible to web readers. Organization refers to the visible and ideological structure of your article. If the preliminary organization of the article is strong, the article will be easier to write and read. The proper use of headings, subheadings, bullet points, lists, and paragraph breaks can make online content more scan-able. To aid your organization, you are recommended to create an outline of your article, have a clear idea of your focus and the information you wish to present, and only include information that directly contributes to your main idea.
• Grammar: While one or two minor grammatical errors will not discredit an otherwise solid article, writers exepted to take the time to proofread and polish their work.
• Use Value: Always ask yourself, “What is this article trying to communicate, and is that information somehow useful, interesting, or valuable?” The controlling idea (or thesis) of every article is the main trunk of use value in any article and should be presented clearly and early on in the article. Supporting facts, lines of logic, and other statements should all support the controlling idea or interest value of the article. Articles which are lacking this value and try to substitute redundant, irrelevant, unconnected, generalized, or obvious ideas will have bad effects on it
Ideation
Because everything begins with a good idea…
Successful articles begin with good ideas. Ideation is the step in the writing process in which the writer forms the controlling idea or topic of article.
