Do you agree as a web editor – or as a reader – that “the blogosphere has killed good writing”? In a recent opinion piece in The Sydney Morning Herald, Michael Kinsley (founding editor of Slate and now editor at Bloomberg View) reviews a blog article by Reuters financial blogger Felix Salmon, who suggests that in a bid for quantity over quality, the Web is killing off good writing. Part of his evidence is some institutions letting go of their blog editors. Another is the sloppy prose and lax fact-checking evident in some blog articles.
How often do you find typos, misspellings, inflated wording, passive voice, poor logic, noun-verb disagreement, other grammatical errors, and even erroneous math evident in articles? What about word flow and writing that is pleasing or even fun to read rather than ragged and jagged and much like nail-scraping on a chalkboard?
Does this overflow from blogs to other Web writing?
What do errors on the page say about author and site credibility?
Web editing is about a lot of things, including taming technology to make content appear online. However, at the heart of good web editing is good writing – making the content readable, understandable, and factual. Is that at risk in the rush for quantity?
Web Editors 