{"id":211,"date":"2016-11-22T18:25:01","date_gmt":"2016-11-22T18:25:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/adamcaplan\/?p=211"},"modified":"2017-01-15T18:36:31","modified_gmt":"2017-01-15T18:36:31","slug":"the-rules-for-writing-online-content-are-not-what-you-think","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/adamcaplan\/2016\/11\/22\/the-rules-for-writing-online-content-are-not-what-you-think\/","title":{"rendered":"The Rules for Writing Online Content Are Not What You Think"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure style=\"width: 259px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/cdn2.bigcommerce.com\/server3300\/1e535\/product_images\/uploaded_images\/buying-guide-confused-image.jpg?t=1398725710\" alt=\"\" width=\"259\" height=\"162\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">What\u2019s different about online?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>If you think writing\u00a0online content\u00a0is particularly different from writing print content, think again!<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s not the medium that determines the rules; it\u2019s another factor. It doesn\u2019t have a name, so let\u2019s call it Todd. Todd is combination\u00a0of audience and form \u2013 a double-whammy that helps guide you to write in a way that can\u00a0be easily read. If you multiply the attention span of your\u00a0audience by the chaos\u00a0of the form,\u00a0you get your Todd Factor.<\/p>\n<p>The higher the Todd factor, the more you need to:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Leave\u00a0white\u00a0space to let text breathe<\/li>\n<li>Use particular fonts that are easy to read<\/li>\n<li>Include\u00a0bold text to emphasize headings for\u00a0easy scanning<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>You also need to:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Provide images that replace text information but also provide a mental break.<\/li>\n<li>Use a catchy narrator voice that makes you sound hip and relatable. (Know what I mean?)<\/li>\n<li>Chunk details into 3s. This list used to be just one, but I caught myself in editing.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Lower Todd Factors mean that the audience\u2019s attention span can be expected to be longer, or the form is quiet. This allow for more colourful language, longer prose, and lists in regular text prose. My blog has lots of white space, the Metro free newspaper has little of that.<\/p>\n<p>To the degree that there are differences in online \/ offline reading, the rules depend more on the human context of your form than on your medium alone.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s all for this week,<br \/>\nAdam<\/p>\n<p>P.S. The interview with Josh\u00a0reminded me how much more attention you can earn when you make a social connection with the reader \/ listener \/ viewer. The art framed in Kristi\u2019s mis-en-scene had an impact on the amount of caring I brought to listening to the interview.\u00a0This weekend\u00a0at the HotDocs Podcast festival, I saw a\u00a0podcaster in real life that I previously had only heard in voice, and this already\u00a0made listening to recent episodes a more fulsome experience.<\/p>\n<p>I guess seeing or hearing a person\u00a0creates a connection to them as\u00a0a narrator and perhaps buys them a couple more pages of attention in print, or an extra few seconds of eye scanning on their blog.<\/p>\n<p>Flesh Reading Level 65.8<\/p>\n<p><em>Crossposted from my\u00a0now-retired blog, Writing for Learner Engagement.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you think writing\u00a0online content\u00a0is particularly different from writing print content, think again! It\u2019s not the medium that determines the rules; it\u2019s another factor. It doesn\u2019t have a name, so let\u2019s call it Todd. Todd is combination\u00a0of audience and form \u2013 a double-whammy that helps guide you to write in a way that can\u00a0be easily &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/adamcaplan\/2016\/11\/22\/the-rules-for-writing-online-content-are-not-what-you-think\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;The Rules for Writing Online Content Are Not What You Think&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[18],"class_list":["post-211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing-for-learner-engagement","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/adamcaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/adamcaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/adamcaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/adamcaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/adamcaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/adamcaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/adamcaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/adamcaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/adamcaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}