Caught in the web

Digital writing skills are essential to the 21st-century writer. Think how often you use your phone, or tablet, or laptop, to look things up, read the news, find something out. Somebody wrote everything that you read.

Reading online is not the same as reading in print, and writing online is not the same as writing for print. Learning how to do it isn’t rocket science, but like any commercial work, it’s about writing for the market – knowing what’s wanted, and providing it.

Let’s assume you’ve been commissioned to write copy – a news story, a feature article, maybe a blog post – for a website. Think, as a writer, how you read online, and what works for you. What makes you stay on a page? What makes you click through to something else? How will you make your web writing find its readers, and keep them? Read on, and find out.