Writeyness :: Info to snack on

When I started as an 18-year-old trainee reporter at The Dundee Courier with dreams of uncovering corruption at the highest levels of Government (a la All The President’s Men), I was told that readers should be able to get the main points of a story just by reading the headline and first paragraph. And they should be able to just scan the front page to get a handle on the day’s most important news.

The conclusion comes first, and the rest of the story is fleshed out from there — the opposite of many other styles of story-telling that start slowly and build to a climactic ending.

This is known as the “inverted pyramid” style of writing, although the craggy old journo who gave me this advice would rather have stuck pins in his eyes than use such a jargony term as “inverted pyramid.”

And before the Internet took over the world, newspapers were the main outlet for this writing style.

Not any more.

Copywriting for the Web is a lot like writing for newspapers in terms of the overall structure. Your home page is the front page. And, just as newspapers have clearly-labelled departments, so websites have clearly-labelled sections.

When it comes to individual pieces of copy, just as newspapers try to grab the attention of readers with eye-catching headlines, so Internet pages need to grab the attention of browsers — and quickly — with similar headlines or offers. And just as newspaper readers are often pressed for time — preferring to browse the paper first, then dig down into the stories that interest them when they have more time — so you have to be conscious that the clock is constantly ticking on how long a visitor is prepared to hang around on your website.

That’s why you have to know your audience and target them well.

Then grab their attention and get your main points across. The details come later.

And no, I didn’t get my Watergate-style scoop. Sadly, the closest I came to uncovering corruption was questioning a referee’s offside decision when covering a football match.