Like hot metal type, should the traditional editor be cast onto the scrapheap - or can established editors put their experience to good use and adapt to new media?
Professional writers enjoy creative writing – it’s their vocation after all. They can happily churn out thousands of words to the envy of many, sometimes to seemingly impossible deadlines.
But this facility with words may be more of a hindrance than a help. Many still have not realised that copy length in web writing is a big turn off.
Web writing is not continuous unbroken fluent prose. It needs to be broken down into short chunks, often seeming disjointed and minimalist in their approach. The fewest words must achieve maximum comprehension. This flies in the face of the traditional approach.
Delegation is not the answer
Due to lack of technical skills, most editors who have turned their hands to web writing put their trust in their programmers and designers - and hope that all the layout and navigation issues will be efficiently resolved for them.
Probably 80% of websites suffer some form of usability and accessibility problems – and this is mostly due to the fact that 80% of web programmers are not fully proficient in either web design or how text should be displayed on screen.
It is not unusual for readers to fail to find what they most want to read. Even when the information exists on the site and has been the subject of many hours of research, copy editing, fine-tuning and styling for optimum readability.
the editor needs to fully appreciate all the usability issues involved and be prepared to steer the programmers
Frankly, the editor might as well have not bothered - poor navigation has rendered the work useless.
To prevent this happening, the editor needs to fully appreciate all the usability issues involved and be prepared to steer the programmers and encourage them to bring the whole team up to speed on the technical issues of the channel they are using.
People on our courses often say that web writing training should be much more widespread. They agree that anyone involved in writing material for the Internet or intranet needs to be trained in the new skills, not just the web team and communicators.
This should include HR professionals, chief executive's department, accountants, front line staff, operational managers and senior directors.
If this approach was more widely adopted communication professionals would be a whole lot happier and companies would engage with their audiences more effectively.