It’s official. Everyone now knows that writing for the web is different from writing for print. Party time, right? Maybe not. Before we completely throw the baby out with the bath water, let’s stop and take a moment to think about all of the good print writing that has gone before us – and what it can teach us about how we write today.

The old way

• Discuss the point of the piece with an experienced editor.
• Plan your points of what you want to say.
• Write your first draft. Pause and take a mental break.
• Print out and read.
• Rewrite, rewrite and then maybe even rewrite it again.
• Print out and read.
• Check your facts, credit sources, never plagiarise.
• Submit if for sub-editing (another person who checks it against the style guide, corrects punctuation and grammatical errors).
• Submit to editor for final review and last minute tweaks if necessary or even more rewriting.
• Print, read, proof and repeat until satisfied.
• Send to print.
• Relax.

The new way

• Get your brief from the marketing/comms/business manager/product manager
• Start writing, planning your points as you go.
• Tweak it a bit if you can – depending on the deadline.
• Print out and read.
• Submit it back for review.
• Document gets passed around to numerous stake-holders who all track their comments which are unfortunately sometimes quite disparate.
• Give it another edit incorporating everyone’s comments as best you can. Sub-edit it yourself as best you can. Tell yourself not to worry about where things are heading as best you can.
• Submit back to original person who makes a few more of their own changes and uploads for publishing.
• See it online and feel a little uneasy but reassure yourself you did the best you could.

Why not the best of both worlds?

Print writing always had a really strict set of checks and balances which I reckon began to erode pretty much from the moment the ‘publish’ button was invented. The impermanence of the web and the sub-conscious thought that things can be corrected on the fly (they rarely are and if the mistake is big enough, too late! Social media would have already noticed) has loosened both our judgement and writing ability.

While I realise we can’t bring the past back (and there are many reasons not to), why not aim to retain the best of what we have learned so far and apply these standards to the present circumstances. Here’s how I like to do it…

My preferred way

• Get a clear brief from your organisation’s content strategist who co-ordinates all content contributors to the site.
• Plan your points of what you want to say
• Write your first draft based on web writing best practice. Pause and take a mental break.
• Print out and read
• Rewrite, rewrite and then maybe even rewrite it again.
• Print out and read
• Check your facts, credit sources, never plagiarise. If you need to get ‘inspiration’ from what other organisations have written, identify what worked well and then do it in your own unique way. My rule of thumb is to never look at what others have written before you start drafting. Do if after if you really have to.
• Print out and read
• Check it against your organisation’s style guide and pass it onto a trusted colleague to proof. (I’m not even going to pretend there’s a sub-editor in the building.)
• Submit back to the content strategist who will liaise with stakeholders to co-ordinate comments and feedback and then make their own editorial call – pushing back on the feedback they feel doesn’t match the overall objective of the content.
• Rewrite new version as instructed if required.
• Print, read, proof.
• Submit for final review.
• Publish.
• Proof online just one more time to make me feel confident.
• Relax!

This is the approach that I use whenever I can to give my clients the highest standards possible. Call me old school if you like, but I’m a big fan of keeping what’s worked well in the past and applying it to the best the present has to offer.