You can’t read anymore, and neither can I or anyone we know. With our collective attention spans firmly in the gutter, no one can focus on anything, let alone a tiny blog post.

It’s our jobs as writers to not make it difficult for readers if we want our pieces read. In the journalism world, they put all of their important information at the top because that is the only place the audience is guaranteed to look. The rest is a crapshoot. Ironically, at the beginning of his article How Users Read on the Web, Jakob Nielsen writes,

“In research on how people read websites we found that 79 percent of our test users always scanned any new page they came across; only 16 percent read word-by-word.”

Although journalists have been shifting their writing styles for decades to lure the public’s attention, we cannot look too much to journalism for help because they have their own problem: words.

In his book On Writing Well, editor William Zinsser says that magazines and newspapers speak in grand fluffy language to pad out space and sound more important than they are. He calls this journalese.

His advice? Rather than write to sound important to the audience, forget them all together (at least when it comes to the style of your writing). Zinsser emphasizes how important it is to have your voice as a writer shine through. If you find something funny, write it in! Focus less on filling up space, and more on writing what you want to say, how you would say it.

“Never say anything in writing that you wouldn’t comfortably say in conversation.”

William Zinsser

That said, using too much slang or writing exactly as you speak could lead to unclear language, so remember to keep your grammar in check, and fully articulate your points. If your audience gets lost trying to follow your train of thought, that is still your fault as a writer. Sure, we are not writing “for” them in terms of style, but that isn’t an excuse for your craft to suffer.

Zinsser says that editing is the most important skill to master. It should come as naturally to you as a program to a machine, which should progress like this:

• Fine-tune your skills until you can pick apart your writing at a glance.
• Read your work aloud to hear if the sentences flow.
• If your writing has a smooth rhythm, then you are one step closer.
• Get rid of unnecessary words and jargon and then your writing is complete.

Don’t be afraid to write in your voice. Remember, we clicked on your article or post because we want to hear what you have to say!