Plain language writing for the web is the form of using plain english but implementing it on the internet and on websites, it may seem like there isn’t much difference but there is one main difference that makes it so writing plainly for the web is different than just plain writing and that’s the fact that it’s on the web, writing in plain english may be even more important when you’re doing it on the web because as we all know, the internet has what feels like an unlimited amount of content and the way users consume this content is much different than any other medium, this is why people or businesses write differently in their Facebook posts than they would on a more traditional medium like print, mainly because there is so much content on the web and that causes users to give less of a chance to content on the web because they could easily just scroll past or exit out of that content if it’s not something that immediately grabs their attention, typically it takes less than 30 seconds for a user to determine whether or not online content is worth reading or engaging with before they decide to either stay and continue engaging with the content or scrolling past or exiting out of it and that’s exactly why keeping your content short and understandable for the first read is absolutely crucial when writing for web because you want to make sure you capture the readers attention in a short amount of time.
Ways to do this can be similar to just simple plain english like things like keeping sentences short and digestible by using understandable terms, however when you’re writing for web you want to try to make that content even shorter because you have less time to capture the full attention of the reader due to reasons I covered earlier in this answer, make it so the reader doesn’t have to do research to understand what you’re talking about in your content, ways you could do this is to avoid using uncommon or foreign words because even high level readers read faster when simple terms are used and the main goal of plain web writing is to allow for the user to be able to read and understand your content as quick as possible, you also want to avoid using abbreviations so that readers don’t have to look up what these abbreviations mean because as soon as they have to do that, there’s a good thing chance they’ll just say “forget it” and move onto to the next thing, you also want to use headings and titles to clearly point out what the user is about to read before they actually read it, that helps in understanding what they’re reading as a whole.
In Class Sources
Briscoe, W8 writing website copy and plain language writing w26, slide 66
Briscoe, W8 writing website copy and plain language writing w26, slide 41
Briscoe, W8 writing website copy and plain language writing w26, slide 38
Briscoe, W8 writing website copy and plain language writing w26, slide 73