Why we type: January 21, 2002 issue of New Thinking

January 21, 2002 New Thinking:
Why we type

Website content management

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Books by
Gerry McGovern

Content Critical

Gaining competitive advantage through high-quality web content

The Web Content
Style Guide

The essential guide
for online writers, editors and managers

January 21, 2002

Why we type

By Gerry McGovern

We type to inform. We inform so as to communicate knowledge. Knowledge is the useful stuff that's inside our heads. If our typing does not communicate knowledge then it fails. Much typing on the Internet fails. The problem is getting worse. Very little is being done to solve it.

There is a common disparity between the typing of words and the need for those words to inform. There are more than 600 billion documents on the Web. In the last twelve months, how many of them have not been read even once? Of those that are read, how many have genuinely communicated knowledge to the reader?

Words are their own worst enemy. They flow easily onto a screen. The Web makes everyone a publisher so everyone publishes. But the more words that are published the more difficult it becomes for these words to achieve their objectives. Which is to inform.

Because if nobody reads you then you cannot inform. If nobody knows your words exist, they cannot read you. If nobody can find your words, they cannot read you. Equally, if you are read and you leave the reader none the wiser, then you have not informed.

In the physical world we have global warming and the ozone layer. In the world of the Internet we have word pollution. Organizations daily belch vast quantities of words onto the Web, further polluting the atmosphere. Like physical pollution starves the lungs of oxygen, word pollution starves the brain of time and attention.

And still we type. The world reverberates to the clatter of fingers hitting keys. And like the criminal rarely considers their victim, we rarely consider our reader. It never fails to amaze me the amount of people who simply do not recognize that it is not enough to type.

I have met many, many people who go to great efforts to create well crafted words. However, these people feel insulted if they have to go to any effort to get their words in front of the intended reader. In fact, in many cases they have not even considered who might be interested in reading their words.

The dismissal of the reader is at the root of word pollution. Physical polluters don't care about their environment. Word polluters don't care about their readers. A contempt for the reader is prevalent from literature to business writing/typing.

Fashionable authors preen in front of snobbish critics by intoning that, 'I wrote this just for myself.' How arrogant and utterly contemptuous of the reader! I wrote this, my publisher printed 10,000 copies, I've bought all of them and am going to read them all myself.

All great art communicates. In business our words should communicate to our customers, staff, suppliers, and whoever else we need to communicate to. The next time you are about to type an email or publish a webpage, ask yourself the following questions:

Why am I typing this?
What knowledge do I wish to communicate?
Who is my reader?
Do they need to receive this communication from me?
How would they like me to shape my words?

Gerry McGovern

Next issue: The need for simple English on the Web
Previous issue: Think twice before redesigning your website
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University of Regina, Canada, selects Content Critical and The Web Content Style Guide as course material
January 14, 2002: Prof. Curt Schroeder, who teaches web design at the university, stated that, "Every serious webmaster, web designer, online editor, web developer or student-in-training will find these books will make them stop and critically think about their web design work. There is so much useful information here, and it's very readable. Content Critical and The Web Content Style Guide must become part of every professional's personal library. My students are now required to read these textbooks." More

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When someone tells you it's time to change, tell them that the same basic design has been 'good enough' for Yahoo for the last seven years.

Content Critical: Highly recommended
"Content Critical is highly recommended. It belongs in every design library. It should be on the reading list of every course in Web design. Any Web designer who plans to be in business five years from now should read this book." More
Ken Friedman, Design Research News, January 2002