The people: web writing secret

The Irish government is expected soon to pledge to hold a second, high-risk referendum on the EU's reform blueprint within less than a year, writes The Guardian today.

What's happening within less than a year? It takes a moment to work out, doesn't it? That's fatal in web writing. You get seconds to tell the reader what's going on and to get them interested in it.



The problem is that we have expecting, pledging and holding all happening in quick succession. One verb per sentence is plenty but sometimes the information is too complicated and we need more. Here we have to understand three things to make sense of the story:

• The Lisbon Treaty which reforms the EU
• The rejection of it by Irish voters in a referendum in June
• The need for a new referendum

Tough work in a single sentence which also has to get us interested in the whole thing.

Irish voters who rejected the Lisbon Treaty in June will be asked to vote again on the issue next year, paving the way for controversial EU laws to be introduced in Britain is how the Telegraph covered the same story.

It is still complicated: we have rejected, asked, to vote, paving and introduced all in one sentence. But changing the viewpoint from the Irish government to Irish voters seems to make it easier to understand.

This is a good general rule. In order of preference, make your writing about:

1. Real individual people
2. Groups of people
3. Organisations
4. Intangible or abstract nouns

Only consider 3 or 4 if you really cannot make it work with 1 or 2.