Page 1 of 3 My favorite part of the Washington Post is the editorial page. Here I can read opinions on world events from a variety of points of view and in a dazzling variety of writing styles. There is the ironic George Will, the emphatic Charles Krauthammer, the thoughtful William Raspberry, and the poetic Richard Cohen.
Ah, the poetic Richard Cohen. He is my favorite. Though I am certainly interested in his opinions, I end up not caring whether or not I am persuaded–and I may fail to realize that I have not been persuaded. I just love the way the writing flows and carries me along to the end.
We may never be on par with world class journalists, but we can do things to improve our readers' experience. We can make sure our writing is clear, free of errors, and has sufficient momentum to keep our readers interested till the end.
This series will examine the components that contribute to effective Web writing. We'll talk about common errors, punctuation, sentence structure, parts of speech, proofreading techniques and ways to strengthen writing style. I promise that it won't be as painful as what you may remember from your high school English class days. In the spirit of best Web writing practices, we'll even "chunk" the information so you don't have to absorb too much at once. Here's what we have planned for the next few articles:
In part one of this series, we'll start by looking at the editing process and then move on to some general tips for crafting an effective Web writing style.
My copyediting teacher told our class that only a fool does her own proofing. Here at CMX, we have a system. Our authors choose a tech editor for each article. This tech editor is also an expert on the topic, and thus can make sure the techniques and steps work as they should. Editors also correct typos, grammatical errors, and misspellings during phase one. Then the article goes to the production editor who proofs it again. Finally, the article goes to the quality assurance team to track down insidious little errors that have remained elusive. Of course, sometimes a particularly sneaky typo gets by everyone, but this system does catch the most egregious errors.
A team approach may not be practical for all people, however. Sometimes you have no choice but to edit your own work. There are techniques you can use to improve the chances that you'll catch your own errors. You may want to try some of the following:
Once you have a technique that works for you, look for the typical typos that often escape your notice and do not succumb to a spell checker:
Once you've caught the blemishes in your writing, you can check for effective Web writing style.
Keywords
Writing for the Web, grammar, spelling, Web content, sentence structure, style guides, proofreading, copyediting
