I posted a lot of articles when I started this blog back in 2003. Here's one of them: Defining Webwriting. Excerpt:
François Hubert, who runs the excellent French-language site Cortexte, is planning to teach a course in Webwriting and wants to offer his students a definition of the subject. Did I have one?
Well, that was a good question. I didn't want to spoil it with a quick answer. So after some thought, here's a tentative definition:
Webwriting is good writing adapted to the limits of the Web as a medium and to the needs of Web users.
OK, that's the one-liner. Now let me expand on what I just said. "Good writing," by my definition, is plain text that does not usually call attention to itself. Orwell called it "transparent writing," text that lets you see the subject without even noticing the words that convey it.
In fact, if you notice the elegant style, the similes as aromatic as fried shoes, the stuttering staccato of alliteration, then it's not good writing. It's just the writer showing off how cool he thinks he is.
This is a philosophy of writing, not a scientific law, and if your idea of literary heaven is mainlining on the high-calorie prose of Cormac McCarthy, I wish you every joy of him. But I aspire to Orwell's clarity.
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