Editing for the Web - Jennifer Carbert

The Edmonton Journal's article Edmonton cracks down on parking violators posted on March 16, 2010 is an online story which needs to adhere to some of the basic guidlines of online editing. Although the story follows some rules, there are some crucial points missing related to formatting.

PROS

• The story as well as each paragraph is very short and to the point. 
• An image which enhances the story is included.
• The headline clearly explains the information that is contained in the story
• There is a list of links in a sidebar on the page.
• The aricle follows one train of thought 
• Every new paragraph begins a new idea which seperates the ideas clearly and makes the article easier to read online.

CONS
There are some traditional guidlines for writing online which are not adhered to in this article however. Most online readers do not want to invest a lot of time into reading the news, they simply want to know what happened and get on with their day. Some techniques which have been developed in order for online readers to quickly digest the main points of the article are

• Bullets or lists to highlight key ideas
• Coloured type for emphasis
• Hypertext and links within the article
• Pull Quotes
• Frequent subheads 

Although not all stories lend themselves to these formatting conventions, it is possible to incorporate some of them, especially in this article. The author could have put the statistcs of how many people have been given tickets into a bulletted list. Subheads such as "new law" and "contact information" could have been added into the story for the reader to easily scroll to the part of the story they wish to read.

Editing stories for online is very different than editing for the physical paper. Online readers don't want to spend a lot of time reading the news, they want to quickly find out the news and move on. Using the techniques listed above the reader will better be able to understand quickly what the story is about. Using short words and sentences may not be fun for the writer, but more readers will follow the articles because they are easy to understand, easy to navigate and offer valuable outside information.

Note: Image from mediabistro