The rise of the Internet has many merits, connecting the globe and making information available to anyone with the technology to go online. The figures speak volumes. Cracking the benchmark of over 3 billion users in 2014, online penetration has reached over 40 percent worldwide, with almost 50 percent of users in Asia. Unsurprisingly, China has a clear lead in the total user number. At over 640 million last year, more people are online in the Middle Kingdom than places two through four (US, India and Japan) combined.
With such a vast audience, it is now possible to reach previously inconceivable amounts of readers; if your content is written in an Internet-friendly manner. This little “if” has influenced in no small amount the way in which professional writers draft their articles.
SEO
Search Engine Optimisation. Just three fatal letters have brought down an entire generation of creative writers and headline enthusiasts. In order for content to be found by as many people as possible, it is vital to achieve a high ranking in search engines such as Google, with the aim that, when anyone searches for “Nanjing boy swallows 18cm skewer”, your article is the one they will find. To achieve this goal, writers need to observe two main rules; headlines and keywords. Under no circumstance is the literary professional allowed to get creative with headlines. A talent formerly indispensable with printed papers in order to grab an audiences attention, fancy and unconventional headlines in the online world result in the death of the article through invisibility. Don’t you dare give in to the temptation of entering “A story hard to swallow” in that title field! “Nanjing boy swallows 18cm skewer” is the only option in our SEO-obsessed times (unless your desired readership is the intelligentia, then replace “swallow” with “ingest”). When it comes down to drafting an article, those little bots who decide what topic you are writing about and whether it should pop-up in anyone’s search engine will crawl their way around a piece of writing looking for key words; i.e. “Nanjing” “boy” “swallow” and “skewer” in our case. Therefore, make sure you sprinkle lots and lots of keywords in your article, including the most commonly used synonyms for the above. Keep in mind not to get too creative please, as chances are no user will go searching for “Jiankang youngster ingurgitates metal brochette”. In this way, SEO strategy forces the writer to limit their vocabulary to commonly used words, discouraging high-level, experimental or ridiculous use of language. In the end, one might argue, it is the writer’s own choice; be funny and unconventional or be read.
WTF
The next challenge a writer might face in the online world is WTF, or “write to fit” (what were you thinking?!). Since a page will feature a certain, fixed layout with set spaces allocated for headlines, content and the like, an issue often faced by authors is the inability to use the headline that conveys the content of the article best because it is, in most cases, too long. Similarily, each word cannot be too lengthy or it might end up cut-off in a rather awkward way, as last letters of the word are being pushed into the next column with a result along these lines: Nanjin g boy swallow s skewer Does not look too snazzy, does it? In traditional print media, if there was a convincing reason to have a large headline across the page, or a lengthy one such as “Traditional Typesetters Turn in Their Graves”, or anything that is not particularly standard, the page layout could be rejigged; to the dismay of the designer of course, yet it was possible. While in the olden days content dictated page layout, in the online world of HTML and line spacing, content forever has to bow down to the almighty emperor website design.
F
Aside from writing, the Internet has had an even more serious effect on reading. As early as 2006, the Nielsen Norman Group discovered that users read online content in an F-shaped pattern, focusing on the words on the top right of the page, the first few paragraphs, while attention drops off the further down the users get, registering only on the first words of the lower paragraphs on the left-hand side of the page. Closely related to this reading habit is skimming. Due to the information overload of the web, readers tend to skim quickly over articles, not taking them in thoroughly, before moving on the next page in high speed. Cognitive neuroscientists have warned that the brains of the digital era are being rerouted to accommodate this type of reading, making it increasingly difficult for the younger generations to read even print texts in a deep, thorough way based on understanding and reflection. People’s online reading habits have in turn had a drastic effect on online writing, as authors pen content tailored to skimming. Initially, it was a matter of inserting clear headlines between paragraphs to break up texts, allowing users to easily jump to the headlines of each paragraph and select any that caught their attention. However, the art of writing easily digestible content has culminated in recent years in the so-called “5 Things I Love About X” style. Wherever one looks on social media these days, it seems that a majority of new media sites feel the need to break their articles down in such a schematic, simplified way. The dark and dreary conclusion is that the online world has trained our brains to be unreceptive to content any more complex than “10 Reasons Why Nanjing is Awesome”. Mr. Tolkien, I am sure, is joining the typesetters in making circular motions within his final resting place.
OP
What the Internet has done for the world is to create a platform allowing for open publishing. With website templates available for free, nowadays anyone with a laptop and a wifi connection is able to become a publisher of content. Gone are the days when print media held the monopoly and the power to decide who could write about what. Today, everyone can be a reporter; even those fools over at Nanjing Expat. This has reinvigorated the age-old debate of quantity over quality. After all, to be blunt, just because everyone can become an author, that does not necessarily mean they should. Similarly, just because one owns a plunger, it might not be the best idea to go around trying to fix toilets. The end result, in both cases, could likely be a flood of something not so pleasant.
That being said, this author has to admit to having bowed down to pretty much all of the above in the quest for online readership (despite the headlines; after all, what is an article without a flashy headline?).
We can only take solace in the fact that worrying reports on Millenials losing the ability to read rather than skim have given rise to the Slow Book Movement. Under the umbrella of the Slow Movement, the SBM advocates slow reading; turning off that pad and picking up a book without the dings of incoming mails and notifications to distract from the task at hand. Considering this is a major challenge for today’s readers, imagine what it could do to us writers!
This article was first published in The Nanjinger Magazine, April 2015 Issue. If you would like to read the whole magazine, please follow this link.
