Online Writing Style Tips
by Zef Hemel- Published:April 9th, 2004
- Comments:17 Comments
- Category:General
When it comes to letters, people usually know how to write a clean and clear letter. However, when it comes to e-mailing, posting on bulletin boards and communication through instant messengers, many people completely lose it. Call me a stickler, but the way people write really changes the way I think of them and I highly doubt I’m the only one.
A couple of tips for people who want to be taken seriously:
- Group sentences together in paragraphs. Don’t start a new paragraph for every sentence, don’t slap them all together in one big one.
- Layout matters. I don’t mean fonts, bold text and the such, I mean spacing between paragraphs. What does the (even plain text) look like visually?
- Start sentences with a capital letter. That’s the rule in normal writing, why shouldn’t it be any different in online communication?
- Use punctuation wisely and where appropriate and only where appropriate. I really hate it when people ask questions like this!!!! Why do they do that????????????? Seriously, I hardly ever use an exclamation point and if I do it’s because I’m expressing extreme emotions (Yay!). And question marks, seriously, one is enough. Please don’t hesitate to put commas in long sentences where appropriate, makes it a lot easier to read.
- Phonetic and 1337-style writing isn’t cool, seriously, it isn’t. If you do it in SMS messages or in teen-chat channels, be my guest. But don’t do it when communication actually has a purpose.
- When you rewrite a sentence, reread it as a whole. This is a mistake I often make. When you replace a part of a sentence and forget to reread it you can get quite funky sentences.
Spelling and grammar are important of course, be sure your text doesn’t contain errors, in particular in important stuff like Resumes. Personally I’m not a great speller, in particular in Dutch, where there are all kinds of funky rules. I might not be good at spelling in English either, but I can always blame the fact that I’m a non-native speaker.
Thank you.
17 Commenti
You’ll hate me for this, but I’ve come to expect a 1 at the end of a series of exclamations. For example:
Zef this article is so cool!!!!!!!!!!!!!1.
This comes from a person being overly excited when they type and releasing the shift before they release the “1″ on their keyboard. This just shows excitement I guess :D, and I still get a really big laugh out of it when I see it because I can imagine them typing and the “1″ ending up at the end.
I’ve also become very familiar with internet lingo. I’m sure even YOU Zef, have a some time written “u” instead of “you” or “y” instead of “why”. It’s just become very conventient to do so. This is of course no excuse to write “then” for “than” (or visa versa, which I see all too often, and become annoyed by).
You have to agree though, that internet lingo has become somewhat of a norm. What really bothers me is kids (or “internet kiddies”) replacing PROPER language with these words. I don’t remember where I read it, but young children are now handing in essays or assignments which use internet lingo, and trying to convince teachers that what/how they write is correct.
To be honest, I like the 1 at the end of the exclamantions. I use it myself once in a while too, but never seriously though. Most of the time to immitate the average MSN user
About the internet lingo. I don’t use it. I might have used it a tiny little in the past, but today, I simply don’t. Well, sometimes for fun “Hey u, wha tha f** is u doin’? Phear me wrath!” But usually, even in chat conversations I use capitals, newlines and punctuation (some people actually notice this and find it surprising).
I’m afraid I’m somewhat of a language purist (in general), I hate people spoiling a language unnecessarily. And the thing about kids writing essays in internet lingo and hardly knowing how to write normally is amusing in a way, but on the other hand quite sad.
Oh by the way, I just realized I have used terms like LOL and ROFL in the past, today I don’t, but I don’t really object to them (”Oh thank you great Zef!!!!1″). :+
Zef you are my god, language god that is!
No seriousloy, I agree with you. I also find it annoying when people use too much of that lingo. In English usually it’s not that bad, at least not if you compare it to the Dutch some people use. For example if you watch TMF (Basicly Dutch MTV, for all you non-Dutchies out there
). Sometimes I have to read sentences three times before I understand what they are trying to say.
I must say that I (just like you I suppose) would have never thought to become such a language purist, but sometimes it’s really annoying and I almost say something about it, however usually I don’t because it doesn’t help and usually makes people calling you a whiner. On the other hand they do that anyway.
About the stuff like LOL and ROFL, to me they are more like smilies. They express a emotion in text, and are very useful for that purpose. And combining them can be somewhat funny (roflmao). However in essays and thelike (Is that correct English? Mine isn’t perfect, but it’s not my native language you know…) they would just look silly. Just like blue and underlined links when you print a document, what’s the point if you can’t click on it?
ps: Zef can’t you make the Comment box a bit larger? It becomes a bit annoying when writing a bit more then the average length of a sentence in MSN.
It is found anoying to use CAPITALS and newlines in chat/msn, because it is different from the normaly used text. Hello, in msn just means the same as HELLO. Actually, most msn users are to lazy to use, let alone find the shift-key. This unintended misuse of typography also occurs when not using shortened versions of words:
How are you doing?
Would mean the same as
HOW!! ARE!! YOU!! DOING!!!!1??????/
for you dont have typed
hwru doin`/
But well, I changed my habbits a bit and I use only low-case at msn now.
hey
Hey I just wanted 2 say does any1 know how 2 get funky writing?
fine no-one? i’m going
hi
yeh how do u get really funky but differn writing?
how do u get funky writing for your msn name
rfeger
tghis sucks
This site is crap
dis is crap! i wont funcky wirting not dis shitty webby!
I dont wanna play with your feelings girl
Gotta be honest with you
I been lyin to you
I already got a girl
And Im surprised
all this time that you couldnt tell
thats why my phones always off
gettin the voice mail