Grounded In Reality

Hello and welcome to the digital world of the voice of the web.

Back when I was just a young lad in school, I always carried around two books with me. One was (and still is) the AP Stylebook. It is the Bible of any writer. My old boss and dear friend, Steve Klein, used to make me keep one in every room in my house, including the bathroom.

The other book is William Zinsser’s On Writing Well. It was given to me by another old boss, Tom Eherenfeld. The subtitle is “An informal guide to writing nonfiction.” This book is important because he brings a very simple mantra of keeping it simple.

And there’s the rub about writing for the web – it’s the KISS method – keep it simple, stupid.

No one is going on-line to read War and Peace. If you have something to say, say it. Don’t clutter up your site or blog with a lot of words that you don’t need to tell your story. Say what you have to say and get out of it. Just like I am doing here…

Another thing to keep in mind is that writers in the digital world have two paragraphs to capture your reader. If you don’t give the reader what they are looking for in a short amount of time, you will lose them. People don’t have all day to read – so get them in, give them what they want and get them out of it as quickly as you can.

That’s not to say if you have a book or a white paper that people want to read, they won’t take the time to read it. Most of the time, they would print it out to take with them, or they will bookmark it and read it when they do have the time.