Reading on the Web

I have just started an editorial internship where I will be typing up news articles online. These few articles have taught me a lot and I feel better suited now for the internship. The Inverted Pyramid idea has always been used for article writing. Always start with the brunt of the facts, most people only read that far, if they go farther they are given more detailed information.

I think that this demonstration brings into question "Technological Determinism". The whole idea that web reading will shape how we read is not necessarily true. People read only parts of articles and glossed over the rest a long time before the computer was ever invented. The existence of the inverted Pyramid style of writing proves that. But people expect certain writing styles in certain mediums. When someone sits down to read a newspaper, they expect to be told the basic facts of the story right away, reading a book someone will give more time to let the basic facts come out in order to have the story develop. So, Web writing is a certain medium that people will have certain expectation of style for. People will expect associative links and easily scannable features within the web.

This is why I question if E-books will really ever catch on. The book is a completely different type of writing style. Expectations of how digital writing should be might be too integrated in the mind to have the patience for an E-book, but I suppose only time will tell. The E-reader does create a new medium for the E-book, thus creating new expectations