Hello everyone, it’s Brenda from Daily Mayo, back for
another Writing Tips Wednesdays!
Writing is pretty much my life- and how I make my living,
which is super cool.
I’ve written online for many years now, and I’ve picked up a
few tricks for how to write for an online audience. It turns out, it’s not the
same method used for writing, say, for your high school English teacher.
I’m going to show you the easiest way to improve your online
writing without even changing any words.
The wrong way:
This is my post. I am going to talk about fish. Fish are the
best thing ever. I think fish are the best thing ever because they have fins,
gills, scales, and can breathe underwater. Some fish don’t have teeth, while
others do. My favorite fish are the fish that have bug-out eyes, because it is
hilarious. Fish, fish, fish, fish, fish, and more fish. Seriously, fish are the
best. I have a pet fish named Sammy, and it has been alive for 14 years. Crazy.
In conclusion, I love fish and so should you.
Ok, so, let’s talk about this fish paragraph for a minute.
What is wrong with it?
The biggest problem with the above paragraph is that it is
long. Guess what doesn’t work well for online writing? Large, clunky
paragraphs. People get intimidated if they think a page will take ages to read,
and large chunky paragraphs look like they would take a long time to read.
So, the easiest thing to do is break up the paragraph. Watch
how much easier it is to read if we break it up some:
The right way:
This is my post. I am going to talk about fish.
Fish are the best thing ever. I think fish are the best
thing ever because they have fins, gills, scales, and can breathe underwater.
Some fish don’t have teeth, while others do.
My favorite fish are the fish that have bug-out eyes,
because it is hilarious. Fish, fish, fish, fish, fish, and more fish. Seriously, fish
are the best.
I have a pet fish named Sammy, and it has been alive for 14
years. Crazy.
In conclusion, I love fish and so should you.
See? It’s easier to read in smaller chunks. In fact, you can
make any of your online writing more reader-friendly simply by breaking it into
smaller chunks. Imagine you are writing a picture book (adding pictures also
keeps people interested), and each paragraph needs to be small enough to fit
under a picture. That will keep you from making paragraphs that are too long.
Another benefit of this style of formatting is it allows
readers to read every word of your post and discourages skimming. You don’t
want anyone to skip the words you spend so long writing, do you?
How do you make your writing online-friendly?
Brenda is a fellow book-lover and coffee-addict. She is a freelance writer, punctuation nerd, and grammar enthusiast. Her favorite book genres are Science Fiction, Fantasy with a Twist, and Dystopian. Brenda blogs about books, writing and more at Daily Mayo. Find her here on CaW for Writing Tips Wednesdays the first Wednesday of every month.
Follow Brenda on Facebook and Twitter or subscribe to updates from Daily Mayo to keep up with all the exciting things in her life; ranging from drinking coffee to get through the day to drinking coffee just for fun.
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