Puck

An article on Xark! claims that writing for the Web is a “new form of writing”:

We all learned to write in more or less the same way: Beginning, middle, end; Subject, predicate, object; Thesis, antithesis, synthesis. Beyond consisting of three items, each of these approaches shares another common theme: Inclusion…. But when you write for the Web as you’d write for print, you write too long. You waste the reader’s time explaining what she already knows.

In fact, writing for the Web is much like writing an edge column for a newspaper (a dying art form in a dying medium, to be sure) or news shorts for a magazine or gossip columns in any medium. Indeed, good writing never explains what the reader already knows: good writing has hyperlinked itself for a couple generations (at least) by tucking the “see further” into parentheses, footnotes, and other unobtrusive places. So the way we write for the Web isn’t new, it’s just that the technology makes it easier for us to get on with our arguments by putting the burden of research onto the shoulders of our readers. And that’s not (necessarily) good writing–and it certainly isn’t new.

Good writing explains old news and ideas in new ways and sheds new light on prior assumptions. Writing for the Web doesn’t change the way our brains work, and the way we cognitively process language determines what makes writing good. And what Dan o’ Xark has come up with is standard fare in an English 101 class: the five-paragraph essay, complete with beginningm, middle and end. No need to follow any of his links; his piece is complete without them.

We love to think we’re committing revolution at every generation, with every doubling of processor speed. And maybe we are. But, in the long view, the way we communicate via the Web is precisely the same way Plato and Shakespeare communicated.

via Xark!: A new form of writing.