Word Spinning for the Web

I've been perusing Yahoo's Style Guide to further my understanding of writing for the web, and I've found it is similar to an effective historian's writing within a monograph. This view is largely based on my experience of reading historical monographs, but also comes from pointers I've learned in various history classes. First, just because one is a good historian does not mean they are a skilled writer. I've read way too many historical works that drone on and on with lengthy sentences and frivolous repetition. Actually, for such books, I usually don't read them once I struggle through the introduction. Instead, I skim as little as possible to quickly end the pain. Like ripping off a band-aid. I've also read some very well written monographs. Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany by Isabel Hull immediately comes to mind. Although Hull's book focuses on boring military practices (social/intellectual history for the win!), her writing is so strong that the work is compelling. In spite of Absolution Destruction being somewhat dense, her introduction and conclusion are only a few pages long, illustrative of her direct, concise writing. She also uniquely utilizes lists throughout her work to promote clarity. Hull's style is similar to effective online writing, where the reader's attention has to be kept. A difference between the two is writing for the web is best structured in bursts, instead of the large amount of text in books. Most online readers avoid pages of text. Overall, I think clear, concise writing is a good rule of thumb, no matter if it is online or not. Yet one must keep in mind online readers tend to have small attention spans! This, along with considering the online interface and possible disabilities of readers, seem to be the only real differences between excellent writing for the web or writing somewhere else to disseminate information.

One way to improve writing is to assess it with the Writer's Diet tool. By submitting a piece of writing, it gauges how "flabby" or "fit" the writing is. Basically, it considers different aspects of the work to analyze its effectiveness, as discussed above. I submitted my last blog, Data Mining, into the tool and this is the result I received:

I am surprised by my results, especially since I submitted a blog post. I seek to be a bit lax and less academic in my blog. This tool is helpful for improving one's writing and I plan on using it while I write for Team Playboy's online exhibit. I can now work on my verb and "it, this, that, and there" usage. The tool shows everything I wrote in parentheses marked out...but I love parentheses and will never stop using them!