You are right when you say it is a fine balance between artistry and practicality. The winner will be the one who can achieve that balance consistently. That consistency will ensure the development and sustainability of your line of work. The success of the business employing you as a writer will give this new “language” credibility.

Rome wasn’t built in a day and language recognition did not come in a day. Time is the factor that does that.

There’s no room for verbosity and I’m not sure there ever was.

I think your assertion that what we’re looking for is a “careful balance between practicality and artistry” hits the nail on the head entirely.

Bullet points have their place. More expansive, aspirational, enticing copy also has its place (within reason). In calling ourselves professionals we’re saying we know what that place is; what goes where; what works.

If being human is not quantifiable then why do we try and make it so? As a writer I much prefer to think that I can reach a target audience at a gut level – a level that actually means something, rather than communicate in a technically proficient but soulless manner.

This is analagous to the ‘SEO copy for search engines or humans debate’ of a while back. To any writer worth their salt it was never a debate – it was about the human element. It was about creating copy (yes, adjectives included) that meant something to someone.
It still is.

(To be honest, I didn’t deliberately sensationalize the title to get more readers/comments.)

I concede that I approach all web content writing from the Marketing & Communications camp. To me and my clients, content is about ROI. I do not want them to engage me if there is no business value to them. I also believe web content does not exist in a vacuum. For many organizations, key messaging was established and enforced long before the Internet. Given my philosophy that the written word is as much of a business function as accounting, I also advise clients on strategies to align their offline marketing collateral with their web content so as not to diminish either investment.

A few of you have mentioned that the above post probably speaks more to the argument that “user centered” practices for writing web content needs to be more balanced. I completely agree!

The facts:

- People do physically read differently online. We have studies to prove this.
- People are spending less and less time reading and more and more time scanning content. We have studies to prove this as well.

As a writer I need to acknowledge these truths and incorporate them into the content I write for clients. However, rules are meant to be broken …and perhaps, this is what I wanted to address in my post.

Sometimes we get so caught up in the golden rules of web writing, that we forget that the words we write hold as much creative weight as the graphic elements on the web page itself.

I just finished writing web copy for a client that threw SEO and Plain Language out the window. We decided on a unique approach that was more about the renaissance of prose than it was about key messaging. Of course, this too, was a Marketing approach that was decidedly taken.

Perhaps the greater sub-text here is about what web writing means to society. The last image I included was the result of a discussion I had with a middle school language arts teacher. She explained to me that kids these days are so used to icons and images online that they no longer read …anything. The school has conceded that they will be allowed to satisfy their curriculum by “reading” graphic novels instead.

Of course, within the greater context, this isn’t a plain language/marketing communications debate at all. It’s one of the philosophical ponderings of “What we do in life, echoes in eternity”.

As more and more of my clients choose less and less written web content over infographics and video – - are we as writers losing the argument with society that there is not only business value in the written word …but human value as well?

Using plain language merely makes the readers experience more effective in a shorter period of time without either pandering or insulting the reader’s intelligence. In fact, using plain language conveys the emotional side of marketing and all other communications more sharply, while increasing the reader’s interest. As both a narrative poet and a user-oriented communications writer/editor/publisher/consultant with 45 years of experience just on this planet, clear language is more effective no matter what the subject, objective or on what the message may be predicated. (Plain language gets the story across quicker, bettter and consistently.

Oh yes, every message–electronic or paper–is affected by the age, experiences, desires, and ability of the reader/viewer/user, whether written in plain language with shorter words, sentences and paragraphs and action verbs or in lazy meandering multi-syllable pronouncements. As Frank the cave-man chiseled, “Bear, here! Diner or dinner?”

Though to be honest, I feel like your title is, at best, specious, and at worst, inflammatory. If I understand your article correctly, you seem to be saying that using plain language methodologies aren’t an effective way of writing emotionally engaging content. I would agree with you, but plain language approaches, as I understand them, are for evaluating content comprehensibility. They have nothing to do with creating the emotional tone of content, nor the creation of content.

So it seems as though you might be attacking methodologies for what they aren’t intended to do — did I miss something?

I work with a number of fantastic content strategists and writers that specialize in the web. I want them to be as adept at being clear as they are at being engaging. I expect them to be skilled in assessing both dimensions, and hope they will use whatever tools are appropriate for the job to do so.

To put it another way, soulful content that impedes audience objectives is no better than soulless content that achieves them. The trick is achieving the right balance appropriate to the task at hand.

Perhaps a better title would be “A Manifesto for Balancing Clarity with Engagement?”

I do see arguments against relying on F-patterns and readability scores, so allow me to address those.

In the behavioral research by Nielsen that you cited, he observed that users tend to scan the first few words of a heading or paragraph. The lesson being that if you want to entice people to read further, give them the gist of the content up front. What’s wrong with that, exactly?

As for readability formulas, their use is quite controversial among plain language practitioners. But even those who think they have a role to play in making sure content is easy to read and understand, you’d be hard-pressed to find ANYONE who would tell you that content should be written to satisfy the formula.

Ginny Redish spells this out in her article, “Readability formulas have even more limitations than Klare discusses” available from http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=344637

This post was mentioned on Twitter by krismausser: New Blog Post: A Manifesto Against Plain Language http://tinyurl.com/yf5mmlv...

You’re right, either extreme – SEO laden content or barren utilitarian text – cheats a website out of connecting and engaging with audiences.

Moreover, it robs writers of the passionate pursuit of the holy grail.

Excluding well-written content in favour of images or video isn’t the answer either. At least not yet…