Writing for the Web

Web Text Readability Scores

Thanks to Derek Miller at Penmachine, in his comments about my post on Chomsky just below, for mentioning Readability.info. It's a site that not only explains various readability systems but allows you to assess the readability of a Web site or uploaded Word file.

Derek has already reported the scores for "Writing for the Web," which are fairly good. It's alarming to see, though, that 23% of my sentences are in the passive.

Honesty compels me to note that Readability.info's page has a howling subject-verb disagreement in the first sentence ("tools...analyzes"), and the Flesch readability scale appears several times as "Flesh." I guess that's just one of the evils that Flesch is heir to.

Noam Chomsky Blogs

While I tend to agree with much of Chomsky's political analysis, as a writer he's pretty boring. The most entertaining thing about his writing is the rage he triggers in his opponents. They might reflect that if an unexamined life is not worth living, an unexamined thought is not worth thinking.

Now you can examine his examination of your thoughts in his new blog, Turning the Tide. It doesn't permit comments, which makes it annoyingly reminiscent of some right-wing blogs, but I expect his readers will find other places to discuss his posts. So far, Chomsky's posts are encouragingly brief. But I take a literalist's exception to his title. As King Canute demonstrated long ago, people can't turn the tide. That's the moon's job.

China Shuts Down TypePad Sites

As noted in Glutter's comment to the preceding post, some kind of shutdown seems to be in effect for TypePad and blogger.com blogs in China (though apparently not in Hong Kong). After replying to her comment I went to her site, where she wrote: CHINA HAS FURTHER CURBED FREE SPEECH AMONG ITS CITIZENS.

Comments to her posts appear to confirm this. I don't know many bloggers in China who use TypePad, but I'll check around to see for myself what's going on. It's a very disturbing development, and it will indeed become a news story—at least outside China.

The State of Print and Online Journalism

The Online Journalism Review reports that Weak Online Economics Threaten Quality of All Journalism, Pew Study Finds.

Yet online journalism appears to be a medium that's attracting young readers who avoid newspapers. Whether you're a journalist or just a news junkie, the story is worth reading.

Is Anyone Editing Their Copy?

Matt Thompson asks a much-needed question at Poynter Online: Is Anyone Editing Their Copy?

Of course, some of us would answer, "Yes, and it should be 'his or her copy'!" But that's what makes editing so much fun.

In ancient Rome, the sponsor of a gladiatorial combat was called an "editor," and the association with hacking and slashing has endured for two thousand bloodstained years.

Adapting Print to the Web

If you'd like to download this post, it's available here as a Word file.

At the end of the 1300-word "print" version, I've appended a chunked version only about one-third as long. Your comments will be most welcome. I've also added the edit one of my students, Rhona MacInnes, performed on the article—reducing it to just eight words.

Adapting Print Text for the Web
By Crawford Kilian

Surprisingly little has been written about transferring print materials to Web sites. Various people, including me, have complained about shovelware—print text dumped unchanged onto the site. But not much advice is available on how to modify such text to make it more readable and usable on the Web.

Often, of course, shovelware is perfectly OK. You can stow a document online as a PDF or word-processed file, knowing visitors want to print it out. Or a document may be so short and concise that it fits snugly on a single screen.

Problems arise, however, because standard print relies on reader habits that don’t transfer to the computer screen. We really do read differently in this medium. Web text should exploit the difference.

What is a "publication" on a Website?

Rachel McAlpine, author of Web Word Wizardry, is doing good work in New Zealand, Australia, and Southeast Asia. A recent article on her site asks: What shall we do with the publications?

Many corporate, government and individual sites offer pages through which visitors can obtain anything from free haiku to very expensive statistical reports...all "publications." The site itself is of course a publication too. Rachel suggests we might list our available documents as "Resources."

Editing for the Web

Anne Pepper, a fellow-Vancouverite I'm going to have to get to know, offers advice on Editing for the Web. Thanks to Derek K. Miller, another Vancouverite, at penmachine.com for the tip. Pepper, Miller, Nick Usborne...something seems to be happening here in Vancouver!

New Ways to Report Information

An article just published in Vancouver's online newspaper The Tyee is a fine example of how to exploit the potential of this hypertext medium. It provides highly detailed statistical information, but it does so with good use of bulleted lists, short paragraphs, and clearly labeled links.

The article, New Ways to Measure Our Progress, summarizes the current state of affairs in "Cascadia," the geographical region including British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and western Montana. The information is surprising and thought-provoking, but writers for the Web will find its structure as interesting as its data.

Infectious Blogs

Thanks to Badpenny, commenting in my preceding post, for tipping me off to a story in Wired News: Warning: Blogs Can Be Infectious.

I can well believe that many "major" bloggers pick up material from lesser-known ones, without always attributing their sources. In the process they spread a given idea much more widely while making its origins harder to trace. Laziness is the likeliest reason for non-attribution. While it may hurt the originator's feelings to be ignored, the idea itself spreads like a virus.