Famous Advice on Writing—and How It Applies to #HigherEd Web Writing

Not your usual web writing tips

Writers offering their advice on the craft have probably been around almost as long as written language itself. While writing tips and tricks abound on the internet today, some of the best writing advice comes from people who wrote before the web’s ubiquity. That these words of wisdom still hold currency means they tap into something fundamental about the writing (and reading) process.

Let’s look at what some writing masters have said about the craft, and then see how we can incorporate that advice into our web writing for higher education.

“Omit needless words.”

This classic gem comes courtesy of William Strunk, Jr., one half of Strunk and White. You probably know of The Elements of Style, an influential writing style guide originally written by Strunk in 1918, and later expanded upon by E.B. White.

The text of Strunk’s original is available online for free. “Omit needless words” is one of his elementary principles of composition:

“Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that he make every word tell.”

Strunk’s notion is hardly a novel one. Shakespeare wrote that “brevity is the soul of wit,” while George Orwell advised, “If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.” Contemporary author V.S. Naipaul’s rules for beginners include the following: “Do not write long sentences. A sentence should not have more than ten or twelve words.”

There’s plenty of research backing up this advice, especially when it comes to web writing. The longer the sentence, the greater the mental strain on the reader (for that reason, the GOV.UK website caps sentence length at 25 words). Research also shows that users have time to read approximately 20 percent of the words on the average web page.

To get our information across quickly and accurately on the web, we must channel Strunk and use clear, concise language, including shorter sentences and paragraphs. This approach is most effective when coupled with the other tactics covered in Higher Ed Experts’ Web Writing for Higher Ed Course.

“Just because people work for institutions, they don’t have to write like one.”

William Zinsser’s On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction (1976) has stood the test of time. His advice on professional and business writing is apt for those of us who struggle against the “academic writing” that pervades higher education. Zinsser writes:

“Just because people work for institutions, they don’t have to write like one. Institutions can be warmed up. Administrators and executives can be turned into human beings. Information can be imparted clearly and without pomposity … readers identify with people, not with abstractions. […]

Plain talk will not be easily achieved… Executives and managers at every level are prisoners of the notion that a simple style reflects a simple mind. Actually a simple style is the result of hard work and hard thinking“.

Or as my boss at the University of Rochester says, “Be human.” The tendency to use “institutional speak” or other jargon can feel out of place on the web and social media, where users have an expectation of dialogue. Writing in a more natural, conversational way encourages dialogue, while using plain language can help with readability, accessibility, and search engine optimization.

But how can a college or university sound like a human being? One way is to develop an appropriate institutional voice and then carry that voice throughout your web content.

Of course, not all of your web content should sound exactly the same all the time. Your institutional voice and tone will necessarily vary between, say, a financial aid page and a Facebook post. But as a former VP at Rochester used to say, “We want it to sound like everyone is singing from the same hymnal or sheet music.” In other words, there should be a harmonious relationship between the different aspects of our institutional voice.

“Read a lot and write a lot.”

“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot,” advises bestselling author Stephen King in On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (2000).

King echoes many writers before, including William Faulkner. In 1947, Faulkner answered a student’s question about the best training for writing by saying:

“Read, read, read. Read everything—trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it’s good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out of the window”.

I’ve been teaching — in class or online — for nearly a decade. I often tell my students that in order to become a better writer, you have to first become a better reader, which means reading a lot, in terms of volume and variety.

Ditto for becoming a better web writer: consume lots of web content and on a variety of platforms. In doing so, you gain a feel for what works when it comes to writing for (and reading on) the web. For example, having a good hashtag game is vital on Twitter and Instagram, but hashtags don’t have the same traction on Facebook.

Indeed, this research shows that Facebook posts with hashtags receive less engagement than those without—something to keep in mind when you’re publishing your content across social media platforms.

To glean insights, go ahead and analyze the digital content you consume every day:

• Email—Which subject lines compel you to open an email? Which emails do you delete immediately? When was the last time you took action because of an email? What prompted that action?
• Social media—Which posts get you to engage by liking, retweeting, commenting, or sharing? What kinds of emotions or feelings (positive, negative, or neutral) in a post are most likely to cause you to act or react?
• Articles and stories—Think about the most recent articles or stories you read on the web. How did you find this content (via Google search, social media, typing in the URL, or clicking an ad)? Was the headline clear, clever, compelling, or all/none of the above? How long was the content?

Read and then write, write, write! In the web writing course I teach, my students—people like you working for universities or colleges—produce e-appeals, tweets, blog posts, and more as part of their weekly assignments. They can see first-hand how web writing techniques and tactics work across an array of content types.

Meet the Faculty: Sofia Tokar

Higher Ed Experts is a professional online school for digital professionals working in universities and colleges.

When you take a professional certificate course with us, you get a chance to upgrade your skills by working on your projects, interacting with classmates just like you and getting detailed personalized feedback from your instructor.

Sofia Tokar Sofia is the web writer and communications officer for Arts, Sciences and Engineering at the University of Rochester. As part of the web team, her work includes creating, editing, and curating content for the university’s homepage and top-level pages, departmental web pages, and social media accounts. She regularly co-hosts on-campus presentations and workshops about strategic and tactical web communications.

Sofia earned her master’s degree in English language and literature from Queen’s University in Canada. She is currently pursuing her master’s in online teaching and learning at UR. She is also a graduate of the Higher Ed Experts web writing certificate program.

Sofia teaches Higher Ed Expert’s 4-week online course on Web Writing for Higher Education.