A Response to “Writing for the Web Versus Writing for Print: Are They Really So Different?” by Judy Gregory

Judy Gregory, communication specialist at the Creative Industries Faculty at Queensland University of Technology in Australia, wrote an article in the journal “Technical Communication” called “Writing for the Web Versus Writing for Print: Are They Really So Different?”

Gregory explains seven major guidelines for writing for the Internet as opposed to writing:

“Structure and design are concerns for Web writers”
“Write no more than 50% of what you would write for print”
“Write for scannability”
“The Web encourages restless reading”
“Split information into coherent chunks”
“Web writers can’t predict where the reader will start”
“Readers ‘pull’ the information they need from the Web”

The author goes on to suggest that the best way to compare print and web writing is by evaluating what she calls “genre” or “the recognizable communicative purposes of documents. According to the author, genre “is primarily characterized by the communicative purposes that it intends to fulfill.”

The major flaw in Gregory’s theory (if there is one) is that there is no difference between writing for the web and writing for print.

Firstly, the seven differences, which may or may not be her original observations, that she details are not differences at all and she touches on that in the article. For every difference that she lays out, she goes back and says that there are similarities. After all, print recognizes all types of genres, all types of lengths, all types of purposes and all types of languages. Written language started with print and continues with print and therefore any document or purposeful writing that appears anywhere other than print is the result of something that was originally printed. In other words, the web writing is just print writing that’s not on paper.

Some have suggested that the web has changed language, that Facebook, instant messaging and email have shortened and altered written and verbal communication and therefore has uniqueness and prescience over print.

There are two issues with this:

1.) Such an idea disregards purpose. Not everyone uses shortened language all the time on the web, nor do we use it all the time off the web. Context matters. Professional emails should not and do not too often include “LOL” nor do all web sites have emoticons. To say the web has changed language and changed writing is to disregard all other communication that isn’t the shortened or representational web language.

2.) Such an idea disregards human nature. If language has changed, it is not due to any new medium. Human nature demands change and evolution. Consider that language, which is made up of innate, objective structures, had and has evolved for thousands of years without the Internet and without electricity. To say an invention has changed that which is human nature is similar to saying that nuclear weapons has led to more war. The opposite is true. Humans have an inner drive for competition that existed before and after the invention of nuclear weapons, but since WWII, the magnitude of war has diminished.

Writing is writing, print or web.

source: “Technical Communication, Volume 51, Number 2, May 2004