Writing that attempts to inform or persuade an audience has got to be relatively easy for readers to process. There is a general rule of thumb that an average listener or even a reader can process only 7 + or - bits of information at one time. So writers either intuitively or experientially have come to understand that they must chunk and package their information in certain ways. And even repeat and summarize what has been said before going on to the next point. In Order to be Successful. And yet, writing that attempts to be literary or experimental does not necessarily have to be easy to follow. Such writing presents puzzles or mysteries for the reader to solve or presents strings of words to learn to appreciate. Often the reader is expected to reread what has been written. And to study it. Ponder it. The way that you might look or stare at a painting in a museum. A writer who wants to communicate information but presents it ineffectively, however, should never hide under the pretense of ... being an innovator. Writing in an innovative style requires great skill and command of a language and it requires also to understand when to abandon oneself to the flow of language. This book, though it will touch on innovative writing for the WWW, is not a book about what is normally called 'creative writing.' It is a book that will concentrate on the basic, yet evolving, conventions of writing electronic discourse. What will complicate matters--and bears repeating here--is that the basic conventions are very unconventional when compared with the conventions of speaking and writing. And therein lies the problem that we have to ponder and solve if we are to be successful.

     When writing for the WWW, writers tend to compose with very few words because they rely more on icons (images, pictures, graphics) as a means of communicating or guiding the reader, who for the most part just clicks from section (or file) to section. If you were to write for the WWW the way that you write a lengthy essay or report for your teacher--say, ten-typed pages--you would probably altogether lose your audience, who would just click you out of sight. And go elsewhere. I am not suggesting, however, that you should not have ten pages of type; I am suggesting, as you will see eventually in passing in the discussion of this book, that there are conventional ways of presenting even that amount of text, making it easier for your readers to sift through it all. A chunk at a time. But beware, for in my making this statement, I have taken leave of what some people believe about what should or should not be an acceptable practice on the WWW. Many believe deeply in the motto: "Fewer words, more images." And additionally believe that everything (each page or file) is to fit on the monitor (after every click) without the reader of a page having to scroll down at all. The average size of a monitor is about 14-15" measured diagonally across, and therefore that physical constraint is generally considered to be your target size. To this issue of words versus images and size of screen, we will perpetually return.

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