Take some tips from technical writing which will make your opinions clear and persuasive in the brand new reading environment of the net.

Print media puts the reader in the passenger’s seat. What if you don’t want a character to die? Imagine if you don’t like the direction the story has had? Traditional reading is linear–you start at chapter one and you also visit the end, with no detours in between.

Instruction manuals have always been different. Who reads instruction manuals from beginning to end? Instead you dip into it, try something, and if that doesn’t appear to work, flip a few pages backward or forward and try again.

Now the internet has become a huge manual where in fact the reader can maneuver around at will–technology has stolen authorial control. You need to expect your readers to jump around. To be successful, anything you write for the web has to follow exactly the same three rules that technical writers use:

Write in Chunks

Readers choose. Understand that your audience isn’t expecting a story–they have specific goals. Points need to be self-contained and clearly marked to greatly help them find what they’re searching for and move on. Respect your reader’s time–don’t make them eat the sundae when all they need is the cherry.

Follow a Structure

You can structure your content by category, rank, location–but there has to be a structure. By organizing your details you are giving your reader a tool that lets them find what they’re searching for and skip what they don’t really need. If you can’t find a structure that works, you should define your points more clearly.

Connect it Together

You can’t force your reader to check out the path you’ve set for them, but you can give them usage of information that supports your message. Avoid being afraid to link, both to resources outside your document and to pages inside it. Your role is to help them achieve their goals; point them towards resources that help them do that.

Like technical writing, the web is approximately helping people find information. Adopt write for us technology of the principals of technical writing in your own work to create it get results.