The 3 R's for Writing for the Web

© Duchess O’Blunt, 2009; all rights reserved.

For those who have written traditional novels, short stories and columns, the transition to writing content for the internet can be difficult to make.

Take Twitter – you have 140 characters – what can you say in 140 characters? Twitter must be a mine field for those who have a marketing background or a very short attention span. I cannot even think in 140 characters.

Facebook has followed this example and encourages short "how do you feel" blurbs.

Readers read the printed word, but scan the internet, so learning how to write for your internet audience can be tricky for those who love to write.

If you can hook them in three seconds you are in.

Writing, when all is said and done, is simply a form of communication and communication has come a long way.

Communication can be as simple as a handshake, a head shake or a “look”. We are fortunate today in that we can communicate through a learned and very extensive list of words that we have attached certain meanings to. We learn this from the cradle, so that task is not as daunting as it sounds when you take into consideration the number of words in any given language.

Words are very powerful whether spoken, written or just thought.

Blogging has become one of the favorite forms of communication. Just think about the millions of potential readers of your thoughts. Here’s where it becomes vital that you take extra care with how you use your knowledge of that vast list of words you have learned.

The freedom to write what you want has never been easier. You can now communicate with people anonymously and sometimes this allows people to express themselves more freely with the mistake of thinking there will be no consequences.

Be careful with this powerful gift of communication. Continue to choose your words wisely and don’t write (or speak) when angry or upset. Try not to clutter the world with garbage. Use the 3 R’s :

Remove yourself.
Take yourself away from the writing and come back after some fresh air.

Remember your message
Don't clutter and don't confuse the reader

Revisit your words
After you have cleaned out the cobwebs with some fresh air, and focused on the 3 second message you want to get across, come back and edit, edit, edit.

I love to read, and I love to write so this whole concept of short blurbs, words with no vowels, and incomplete sentence structure drives me bonkers. Texting my thoughts and limiting them to a one liner is like an ice cream cone without the ice cream. You see what I mean it’s a difficult transition.

Learning how to keep it simple has been a problem for me.  But I continue to work on it.

I’m off now to sharpen my wit and see if I can come up with at least one or two poorly structured, misspelled one liners for Twitter. Find my Tweets.

I love that HubPages encourages writers to write.

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