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You are Director of Communications writing a post for your company or non-profit blog. Are you imagining your high school English teacher, a stickler for grammar, watching over your shoulder? She’s with me, too.
But to write content for the internet, you’re going to have break a few grammatical rules and use punctuation not normally considered appropriate for business.
Here’s why…Your visitors usually find your website because they have a problem they want solved. They’re impatient. Anxious. Ready to act.
And they want the text conversational. No time here for expansive explanation. Your visitor is thinking, “I’ll look you over quickly, please help me now or I’ll click away.”
The difference online is scanning and speed.
So, what are some of the rules you can break in your conversational, easily scanned text? Lots, but here are 4 you can use starting with your next blog post or Web page change.
4 Grammatical Rules You Can Break in Your Web Writing
1. You can use sentence fragments.
Don’t worry, your readers gain context from the words around them. Fragments allow for a faster scan. And they can be good for dramatic affect. See the fragments in the second paragraph above, “Anxious. Ready to act.” Did you get the feeling of restless search?
2. Don't spell out small numbers.
I have published over 30 books in my time and my bible is the Chicago Manual of Style. The rule is that for numbers under 10, spell them out. Ten and above use numeric. But it’s easier to scan numbers than words. So, this headline works, “3 Steps to Quality Building Construction and Renovation.”
3. One-sentence paragraphs can be powerful.
See paragraph 5 above, "The difference online is scanning and speed." Notice how effectively this one sentence paragraph directs you to the key points of the post—scanning and speed make web writing different.
4. You CAN use exclamation points!
My copy of the high school text “Elements of Writing” says, “Use an exclamation mark only when a statement is obviously emphatic.” Hmmm…let’s see about that.
Readers appreciate a conversational style, but the hard part is, you’re not there to use your voice to denote excitement or boredom, calm or anger, importance or triviality. Take a look at the sentence below, using a period and then an exclamation point:
“But online, your prospects find you through the search engines.”
“But online, your prospects find you through the search engines!”
Prospects find you instead of you having to go out and find them. That’s a radical, new idea born of the Web. See the exclamation point? Feel my excitement?!
One caveat, though, and that is to consider your reader when you’re breaking the rules. Do you convey the right idea and emotion with the way you’ve written your text? Don’t let it backfire. You don’t want to appear sloppy, careless, or out of place. For example, an exclamation point probably won’t work in an article on the uses of the alloy TinSilverCopper (an article I wrote for a manufacturer's Wikipedia page).
And this isn’t to say you should toss aside the basic rules of grammar. Grammar adds clarity…the writing must speak for itself. When I edited books for my publishing company, it was often a revelation for my authors to realize that they wouldn’t be looking over their readers’ shoulders when their book is read. Say what you mean concisely or your reader will miss the point!
But you can use language and punctuation in unconventional ways to convey facts, ideas, and emotions. Respect your high school English teacher, but don’t be afraid to get your point across for scanning and speed online.
Until next time,
Nick
Nick Burns specializes in SEO Web Writing, website information architecture, content marketing, consulting, and publishing. You can contact Nick here for help with your internet marketing.
