Internet words

Recently, I've been reading a lot of my life is average. And in due fashion, I came up with my own. [My life is so average, though I doubt my submissions would be posted]

Yesterday, I went to a sausage sizzle [nothing unusual here] and the pretty young man asked me if I would like my sausage straight or diagonal on the bread. MLIA

That made me think. When doing things in the marketplace or in any sort of advertising, people must ensure that the needs and wants of others are taken into account.

In a way, writing for the internet is much like the being the [pretty] man handing out sausages. [see what I did there]

I thought i'd relate e-writing to one of my favorite topics, food.

1. The internet is in real-time. Newspapers and magazines are not. If a reader has a query about a story they can comment on it straightaway. On websites like stuff.co.nz readers can post questions and comments instantly. With newspapers, the reader's rants and concerns might not be published till the next day. Much like the man with the sausages, I can give instant feedback if my snack was undercooked.

2. The internet is like a food court. There are millions and billions of sites people could go to. You need to attract them to yours. Much like signage, there's certain things that make your site attractive. According to a somewhat ditzy magazine exec, "pictures are the new words". Why use 1000s of words when one picture will suffice. Same goes for site navigation, make it easy for readers to traverse your site.

3. E-writing needs to be timely. Picture this: you go to your favourite fish and chip shop [insert different food type here] to get your weekly fix. But when you get it the food is cold, shriveled and smells off. It would make you mad, right? Likewise, no one likes logging onto their favourite news site to see information that broke in the media weeks ago. Keep it timely and fresh, because there's plenty of other sites to go to. The best thing about the net is that content is updateable. As new information comes in you can post it.

4. It needs to be casual. Not too casual however, we all know about my love for punctuation and spelling mistake websites. If writing for the internet was a restaurant, it would be more smart casual than black-tie. The tip here is to make it conversational and less formal than a newspaper.

5. Don't overwhelm readers. We all know daunting it is when faced with a ginormous menu. With this fact in mind, make it easy for your readers. Place text into easy to read paragraphs not 1 huge block. If in doubt think of chocolate - no one [that I'm aware of] eats a family sized block in one bite. That's why it's in segments. Let that fact inspire your writing - several little parts rather than a BIG part.

E-writing is a bit like making a Soufflé, it may fall flat the first few times, but just follow some tips and keep trying.