1. Improving Your Writing for the
Web
© Danielle Travali, 2012
Touchstone Newspaper

2. What NOT to do:
• Don’t use too many adjectives.
• Don’t use filler words like “quite,” “very,”
“rather,” etc. By trying to sound sophisticated,
you will end up sounding silly and pretentious.
• There are a lot of big, flowery words in the
English dictionary. I don’t know why half of
them are even there. Use them sparingly.
Rule: try not to use any word the average 18-
year-old college student wouldn’t understand.

3. Oy vey…that’s cliché!
• Avoid clichés as much as possible. “Blue as the
sky,” “dark as night,” and “happy as a clam”
are examples of phrases that make writing
professors roll their eyes.
• For the largest collection of clichés on the
Web, visit http://www.clichesite.com/

4. Avoid the passive voice
• Use only the active voice: “The girl kicked the
ball” instead of “the ball was kicked by the
girl.”
• People should always be the ones performing
the action of the sentence. If you are
confused, visit this site:
• http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/
539/01/

5. Use short words
• You should “prefer about to approximately, after
to following, let to permit, but to however, use to
utilise, make to manufacture,plant to facility,take
part to participate, set up to establish, enough to
sufficient, show to demonstrate and so on.
Underdeveloped countries are often better
described as poor. Substantive often means real
or big.”
Source:
http://www.economist.com/research/styleGuid
e/index.cfm?page=673915

6. Avoid unnecessary words
• Use one word to replace two. Do this as often
as possible.
• Please review “The Economist” publication’s
style guide. Its editors share a list of words you
don’t need to use:
http://www.economist.com/research/styleGui
de/index.cfm?page=673919

7. Write in everyday speech
• Don’t try to be a Ph.D writing a dissertation.
Write like you’re having a conversation with
your reader!
• You can use slang, but only occasionally, when
the situation calls for it.

8. Don’t be redundant
• You don’t need to write something like “I saw
it with my own eyes.” This is redundancy and
it’s actually funny if you think about it. I mean,
did you see it with someone else’s eyes? No.
It’s obvious that you saw whatever you saw
with YOUR eyes, so you don’t need to clarify
that.

9. Redundancy v. The Lean Version
Source:
http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/concise.htm

10. Use Proper Grammar
• Know the difference between its and it’s, they’re,
their and there, your and you’re.
• Its is a possessive (The cat licked its own fur.)
• It’s is a contraction, meaning it is
• They’re means “they are”: THEY’RE bringing their
car to the shop.
• Their is a possessive, meaning “it belongs to
them” as in “THEIR car is in the shop.”
• There refers to place—Their car is over THERE.

11. Follow AP Style when possible
• http://www.wwu.edu/journalism/syllabi/207l
abmanual.htm
The link above is a guide to basic AP style, which
you should follow as much as you can when
writing articles for Project LIFE.

12. As always…
• ASK QUESTIONS IF YOU GET STUCK! 