Insights
1 min Read
June 26, 2013

The pen is mightier than the latest in technology.

Katherine Lindstedt

What’s the secret to writing well for the web? A lot of tips come to mind, but ultimately, it’s about simply writing well.

That’s not to say there aren’t certain medium-specific practices to consider as you write a website or an email (mostly because of how different the experience of online reading is from offline reading), as some of my coworkers would be more than happy to discuss with you.

Nor is it to minimize the role of design in our experience of the words on the screen.

But nothing, not even the craziest scrolling or the next big internet thing to come or the snazziest of designs, can magically make bad writing good.

I recently stumbled upon this web-page piece by Justin Jackson, a great reminder of the value of simplicity in the era of things like parallax scrolling and responsive design. While I (and plenty of other Ducks) appreciate and are fascinated by these new breakthroughs in approaches to web design, it’s important to always remember the power of words, especially as we continue to move far beyond the basic HTML in which Jackson dresses his particular choice of words.

So, can innovative design enhance good writing? Sure. But the good writing has to be there to begin with.