The end of the editor?

The end of the editor?
Perceptions about the role and impact
of the editor on language standards
in Web publishing
Tamsin Stanford
School of Communication, Culture and Languages
Victoria University
Principal Supervisor:
Dr Michele Grossman
November 2005

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Table of contents
Acknowledgements ...........................................................................................................4
Abstract ..............................................................................................................................5
Introduction........................................................................................................................6
My question in context.......................................................................................................7
Narrowing the focus ..........................................................................................................8
Communicating the research.............................................................................................8
Part 1: Methodology.......................................................................................................10
1.1 Choice of research method ..................................................................................10
1.2 Conducting the survey online...............................................................................11
1.3 Participants..........................................................................................................11
1.4 Procedure ............................................................................................................13
1.5 Ethical issues.......................................................................................................14
Part 2: Reviewing the literature.....................................................................................16
2.1 Setting the stage: the editor and publisher in the print environment .......................17
2.2 Defining hypertext................................................................................................19
2.3 The new medium demands a new literacy ...........................................................20
The reader and writer roles are redefined............................................................22
A new type of author emerges.............................................................................23
2.4 The democratisation of Web publishing ...............................................................24
2.5 Developing the skills for the medium....................................................................26
2.6 Dealing with an ever-changing language .............................................................28
2.7 The human editor takes a back seat ....................................................................29
Editing with ease .................................................................................................30
2.8 The changing role of the editor.............................................................................33
2.9 Contextualising perceptions about the medium....................................................35
Part 3: Research findings and discussion ...................................................................37
Websites as a medium for communication ......................................................................37
3.1 Elements of a website..........................................................................................37
3.2 Reliance on the medium......................................................................................38
3.3 Impact of errors: print compared to Web..............................................................39
3.4 The Web publishing process................................................................................41
3.5 The editor: role, reactions and scope of involvement ...........................................42
Use of programs and guides in preparing content ...........................................................45

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3.6 Corporate and other printed and online guides ....................................................45
3.7 Computer spelling and grammar checks..............................................................46
3.8 Participants rate their own competence ...............................................................48
3.9 Editing on screen: speed over accuracy ..............................................................49
3.10 Writing for the Web versus writing for print ..........................................................49
Analysing the effectiveness of content ............................................................................51
Discussion.......................................................................................................................53
Constructing a ‘typical’ communications professional ..........................................54
Implications for editors.........................................................................................55
Opportunities for future research.....................................................................................55
Conclusion .......................................................................................................................57
Championing the cause...................................................................................................57
A misplaced sense of control...........................................................................................57
Maintaining language standards......................................................................................58
The editor is dead; long live the editor!............................................................................58
Appendix A: Research survey questionnaire..........................................................60
Appendix B: Research survey textual analyses......................................................65
Appendix C: Research survey raw data...................................................................68
Bibliography.....................................................................................................................88

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Acknowledgements
The idea for this thesis would not have developed were it not for all those people who
couldn’t care less about spelling, grammar or punctuation, or how to write for the Web.
Thanks must go to them for keeping me employed and for feeding my passion.
The busy communications professionals who took the time to respond to my survey brought
this thesis to life and provided me with great material; thank you for your involvement.
Enormous thanks go to Dr Michele Grossman, my supervisor, whose expert guidance kept
me focused throughout and made this journey a very smooth one.
To Dad and Susan: thank you for your unfailing support, for always believing that I could do
this, and for letting me know that it was OK if I decided not to.
And lastly, but most of all, thank you to Joe, who made sure I kept a sense of perspective
and who supported me every step of the way. Without you I could not have done this.

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Abstract
The role of the editor has long been recognised as a vital part of the print publishing
process. However, the World Wide Web offers a new publishing medium that may require a
new approach to content and standards of language use.
While previous studies have assessed responses towards language errors in print (O’Neill,
Fontaine & Sligo, 2002), the success of organisational websites in communicating (Durham,
2000), and the differences between print and website writing (Gregory, 2004), little research
has been conducted into perceptions of users about the editor’s role in publishing website
content.
This thesis investigates whether the way communications professionals working in the non-
profit and public sectors perceive website content may suggest that the editor’s role is
changing. Based on these perceptions, it considers what the impact might be on standards
of language in Web publishing.

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Introduction
In the early 1980s, before the presence of computers in homes and classrooms brought the
World Wide Web to the fingertips of many, the focus of much educational research was on
the rise of the whole language approach to reading and its implications for literacy. By the
early 1990s, the educational debate had extended to the importance of grammar in young
children’s education, with a question mark over a return to the prescriptive grammar
practices of the 1950s and 60s (Williams, p. 19). The same generation that grew up and
undertook its schooling during these debates also experienced the introduction of
computers, followed by the arrival of the Internet. For people in this generation, the
question posed in the title of this thesis might seem irrelevant, as they would find it hard to
imagine a world without the editorial support provided by word processing programs. But
for the previous generation, the generation to which I belong, computers were the catalyst
for a change in the educational context, which included a shift towards digital literacy,
accompanied by a changing social context.
The Internet provided an entirely new medium for communication through synchronous and
asynchronous chat rooms, role-playing fantasy games and email. This was followed in
1994 by the creation of the World Wide Web – the medium at the heart of this thesis –
which more easily enabled vast amounts of what had previously only existed in print to
become available online via websites: journals, poems, corporate reports and brochures,
business directories and advertising – lots of advertising.
As we will see, the role of the editor in print publishing has developed since the advent of
print technology in the 14th
century to be recognised as a vital part of the modern-day
publishing process. The existence of the Web has provided more people than ever before
with the tools to publish their work and reach wide audiences. Yet in many cases there is
no quality control, leading to vast amounts of content that has not been edited as it would
have been, were it published in a pre-Internet print environment. With so many words ‘out
there’, and no gatekeeper checking the standard of content, what is the impact on language
and on standards of written communication?

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My question in context
I decided to pose the question of the possible demise of the editor for two reasons. Firstly,
as a corporate writer and editor of printed and website material for the past eight years, it
has been my perception that the standard of what is considered acceptable for a corporate
website is generally lower than for a printed document. By ‘lower’, I am referring in particular
to the correct usage of grammar, punctuation and spelling relevant to the particular country
(specifically Australian or British English, as opposed to American English) and, to a lesser
extent, to the appropriateness of the message for the audience. In my experience, the
editorial processes governing the production of a brochure, newsletter or other printed
document are more rigid than those followed in the production of online content. Thus I
wanted to investigate whether others share my perception that website content does not
adhere as rigidly to the standards we have come to expect of print, or whether the medium
encourages a more relaxed approach to the rules of our language.
Secondly, given the traditional role of editors as gatekeepers of language – at the level of
influencing and maintaining standards of public language, and of applying the standards
identified by their organisation as appropriate – I wanted to find out what the current role
and impact of the editor is, or is perceived as being, in the Web publishing process. This
would also enable me to hypothesise about what the future might hold for corporate editors
if others shared my perceptions.
At the start of my Masters program, my practical experience far outweighed my academic
knowledge about the subject of Web publishing and language standards. An encounter
during my first semester with the theory of hypertext sparked an interest in understanding
more about the impact of the medium on writing. In short, I wanted to try to understand why
the content my colleagues supplied for me to edit for the website seemed to be of such a
low standard. In the course of writing a critical review essay, I found a distinct lack of
research into the language being used on websites. In 2000, Durham believed that interest
was predominantly focussed on aspects of the Internet other than websites, namely chat
rooms and email (2000, p. 3). While previous studies have assessed responses towards
language errors in print (O’Neill, Fontaine, & Sligo, 2002), the success of organisational
websites in communicating (Durham, 2000), and the differences between print and website
writing (Gregory, 2004), little research has been conducted into perceptions of users about

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the editor’s role in publishing website content, and the implications arising from these
perceptions for the standard of language contained in websites.
Narrowing the focus
The Internet is such a huge beast that it would be wrong to generalise about its content:
Snyder (1996) points out that ‘it is just as difficult to talk of “generic” hypertext as of generic
print’ (p. 19). Even limiting the focus to ‘websites’ reveals different genres of content, such
as news, personal blogs, online retailers, e-journals or corporate information, each with its
own writing style and tone to reflect the aims of the organisation or individual, and with
‘marketing’ language in particular featuring in website content studies. In the print world,
the equivalent would be to compare an encyclopaedia with a church newsletter, where
budget, strategic aims and resources have a large impact on the standard of the end result.
This led me to focus on what people think about corporate websites as a form of
communication, and what editorial checks and balances exist, or should exist, in their
ongoing production. Do people care if language errors are made on corporate websites, or
do they see the medium as a more relaxed environment for language? Are standards
lower, and if so are they acceptable, or even noticeable? To this end, I surveyed a group of
my peers – communications professionals working for Australian non-profit and public-
sector organisations – to examine:
 Perceptions about the Web as a medium for communication;
 Attitudes towards the editor function as part of the publishing process; and
 Opinions and experiences with programs and guides used to prepare content for
publishing, specifically the direction and assistance provided for grammar, punctuation
and spelling.
Communicating the research
I was raised and educated in a print environment, where even the handful of Mac
computers at my British secondary school were used for design and play rather than
communication. When I was given a second-hand computer for assignments at university
in 1994, I still ‘thought’ on paper, using the computer only for typing up and printing out my
final draft. Now I find myself working at a computer five days per week, with even more
time spent ‘online’ at the weekends. A keyboard has become a more natural implement
than a pen, and my thoughts are transferred straight from brain to screen, where they can

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be easily edited and manipulated. This has raised an interesting internal struggle for me:
how to structure and present content created on screen and about electronic content that is
destined for a traditional print medium such as a thesis? As a result, I have tended towards
using some of the tools I have learnt for effective electronic writing – such as using
paragraph headings that break up long blocks of text and provide visual ‘signposts’ for the
reader, and avoiding capitals for titles, apart from proper nouns – while trying to keep within
the prevailing discourse that is an academic thesis, although this conservative genre is also
gradually changing.
I have also made this thesis available on the Internet to enable me to present it in the way
my instinct dictated, with ideas and relevant sections linked electronically, so that each
reader ‘may “transform” the textual body by following alternative pathways’ (Snyder 1996, p.
31, citing Moulthrop 1991), while always providing a sense of the ‘whole’ document.
The address of this thesis is www.penroseproductions.com.au/thesis [no longer active].

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Part 1: Methodology
1.1 Choice of research method
Denzin describes qualitative research as ‘a situated activity that locates the observer in the
world’ (2000, p. 4). Almost eight years of working as an editor, for print and electronic
media, and almost 10 years as a Web surfer and consumer, has enabled me to observe
countless examples of corporate Web publishing on the Internet. Much of what I encounter
has been written for print and has not been adapted to a user-friendly online format. Some
is badly written, incorrectly written, or written so long ago that it can no longer be assumed
to be correct. In my experience this is in stark contrast to organisations’ printed publications,
which follow a more rigid publishing process and often have a specific review and updating
process, with a budget to match. In one non-profit organisation, I have observed the
approval and checking process for printed documents, from promotional postcards to
regular magazines, to involve the appropriate department manager, then the communications
manager, often a director and always the chief executive; website content, on the other
hand, is very often published with the approval of only the appropriate department manager,
who is recognised as the subject expert, following checking by the website editor.
These experiences of poorly written content as the face of an organisation have given me
an interest in learning what my peers think about Web publishing, what they perceive to be
the role of the editor in this new environment and what they think about websites as a
medium in general.
Quantitative research methods return a good level of reliability but I wanted genuine
opinions from those in the field as I felt that my experiences could influence any options I
might provide in a quantitative approach. I therefore developed a research questionnaire
with mainly open-ended questions to encourage detailed answers, providing real insight into
people’s perceptions. Additionally, allowing participants to provide their own comments
(qualitatively) rather than selecting from pre-determined choices would be better for validity
for the purposes of this study (Knight 2002, p. 88). It would also allow me to cover the topic
in ‘depth’ rather than ‘breadth’, as articulated by Blaxter, Hughes and Tight (2001, p. 64).

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1.2 Conducting the survey online
As I spend the majority of my working day at the computer, as do those taking part in my
research, it seemed appropriate and useful to conduct the survey in the online environment.
Specifically, building an online survey had the following advantages:
1. It enabled me to involve participants located geographically across Melbourne in a way
that would have been more difficult with focus groups or individual interviews, avoiding
the time constraints of participants and juggling full-time work with study.
2. Gathering data electronically significantly reduced the amount of time needed to analyse
and use the results: as I work straight ‘from brain to screen’, instead of drafting first on
paper, I simply copied and pasted those insights that I wanted to use in the findings,
avoiding lengthy transcribing sessions.
3. Participants were able to choose the most convenient time for them to complete the
survey (half of all participants completed their surveys between noon and 2.30pm, and
19 of the 20 completed it during their working week between 9am and 4pm).
4. Online surveys allow participation to be completely voluntary – participants can
withdraw at any time more easily when the survey is conducted anonymously on a
computer instead of face-to-face.
5. Most importantly, it allowed participants to complete a survey about website content and
publishing while they were working in that same medium, allowing me to gauge from
their responses some of the techniques and behaviours used by people writing in this
environment.
The only disadvantage I identified was that participants could not easily ask me for
clarification during the course of the survey in a way that would have been possible in a
focus group or individual interview setting.
1.3 Participants
I decided to focus on the publishing practices and perceptions of those working specifically
in the non-profit and public sectors, as their communication channels are not involved in
direct selling, and tend to be informative rather than containing what Price and Price (2002)
refer to as ‘marketing fluff’ (p. 88). They are required to publish diverse information to a
range of different stakeholders clearly and have a focus on the community, as well as a

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requirement, if not an obligation, to remain credible. Using these sectors has allowed me to
make use of the professional contacts I have made through working in the field.
I identified my potential participants as those working within the communications
department of two government bodies and four non-profit organisations; however, this does
not necessarily indicate that they are in an editing role. Rather, they are in some way
involved in the production of content – both written and graphic – some of which may be
destined for the electronic medium, and some for print. It should be noted that in one
organisation the department responsible for internal and external communications, including
management of the website and Intranet, is the Public Affairs Department rather than
‘Communications’. All participants have regular exposure to the website of the organisation
in which they work and are computer literate to the extent that they have enough knowledge
of computers and operating systems to access websites via the Internet and to
communicate via email.
Thirty people were invited to participate. Given the average composition of communications
departments, it is not surprising that the majority of potential participants – just over three
quarters – were female. Seven men were invited to participate, but were under-represented
in the results, only four of those seven responding. The results are therefore more
representative of women, and also of younger attitudes: of those who provided their age, 60
per cent fell into the 25 to 34 age group, and only one was aged over 45. Of the 19 who
responded to the question about the highest level of education attained, 12 held
undergraduate degrees, five held a postgraduate diploma or certificate, and two held a High
School Certificate or equivalent.
Twenty-one are personally known to me, 17 of whom consented to participate. Of the
remaining nine who were recommended as contacts, five completed the survey. An
acceptable response rate for the purposes of this research was 15: Overall 20 of those
invited to participate did so, a response rate of 66.66 per cent.
A copy of the survey can be found in Appendix A.

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1.4 Procedure
An online survey was built using QEDML software (Questionnaire Exchange and
Deployment Markup Language). In most cases I mailed the invitation to participate, but
emailed several people who were happy to receive information in this way as it is a quicker
method. The invitation contained details of the project, its aims, and information about what
their involvement would entail. Those who provided their consent to participate were
emailed, thanking them for their interest in the project, and reiterating that participation was
anonymous and voluntary and that they could withdraw at any time, or contact me with
queries. This email contained a link to the website for this survey, not accessible via a link
from any other location. Although they were told in advance that the survey would take
approximately 40 minutes, the survey software allowed me to include a visible ‘measure’
identifying their progress through the survey so the participants knew how much more
needed to be completed. At the end of the survey, a closing page thanked participants for
their time and provided a link for them to email me if they would like a copy of the final
thesis. Two participants requested a copy and one emailed me to comment on how useful
the visible ‘measure’ was, so she could see her progress.
The first section, ‘Websites as a medium for communication’, aimed to elicit respondents’
opinions about how important the different aspects of a website – including design and
technical aspects – are to them, and how their impressions of an organisation are shaped
by errors in print and website communication.
Section two garnered information about the processes within their organisation, and their
specific views and experiences of the role of the editor in the process.
In section three, respondents were asked about any programs or guides available to them
that they may use in preparing content, and were asked to judge their own competence in
correct language use. It also asked whether they perceived any difference between writing
in the print and electronic media. This section included two brief content analyses of de-
identified sample text, which required the writers to shift into the role of readers without
explicitly making them aware of this shift. The body text (that is, the main article on the
page, not navigational items or images) from a page on a non-profit organisation’s website
was presented in two ways: in its original format as it appeared on the website; and as an
edited version that used some of the common rules advocated for Web writing, such as

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chunking information and using bulleted lists for clarity and brevity. In this section,
participants were asked to evaluate the two pieces to see if they found one to be more
effective than the other. The second text was taken from a Victorian local government
website and was selected for its multiple errors. Respondents were again asked to
evaluate the text and were prompted to see if they would make any changes such as word
choice, spelling, grammar and punctuation. Copies of both texts form Appendix B.
The purpose of the final section was to collect basic demographic information that may
identify a correlation between education, gender, or age, and the responses in the rest of
the survey.
1.5 Ethical issues
Using the Internet to gather research data raises issues that are different from more
traditional data collection methods. Moreover, this method is still in its relative infancy.
Problems can arise ‘when a methodology for conducting research is so novel that there are
no universally accepted standards or guidelines for its ethical use’ (Porr and Ployhart in
Buchanan 2004, p. 131).
In this study, taking into consideration the software and participants at my disposal, I aimed
to ensure that my survey results would remain confidential. To minimise the risk of
identifying respondents, I intended to invite at least two people from each organisation I
contacted. Unfortunately, I was not able to make as many contacts as I had anticipated,
which resulted in three individuals – none of whom were known to me personally –
representing three different organisations. However, two out of those three did not respond
to the invitation to participate. Peden and Flashinski (2004), in their content analysis of
surveys and experiments online, found that none of the studies they looked at achieved the
threshold for compliance with confidentiality guidelines (p. 15).
Confidentiality can be achieved through the encryption of data collected; however, this was
not a feasible option for this study. The QEDML software was chosen because it would not
incur any costs, and a survey could be built in a very short time frame. Technical
assistance was provided by Dr Rebecca Mathews, a registered psychologist employed at
my workplace, who built the survey and had temporary access to the data for the purpose

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of downloading and then deleting the survey results from the program. Access to these
results was by password only, ensuring that they could not be accessed by anyone else.
Downloaded data will be stored on CD ROM, with password-only access. Dr Mathews did
not have access to any stored or confidential data and is bound by the Australian
Psychological Society's Code of Ethics with regard to privacy, confidentiality and research
ethics and conduct.
To encourage frank responses, given that many of the participants have worked with me in
the past or work with me currently in my capacity as a writer and editor, the survey was
anonymous and did not solicit information such as organisation, name, or job title. This was
particularly important for those organisations in which I had only one contact. The result is
that participants’ comments used in the findings are not attributed to any individual.

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Part 2: Reviewing the literature
In 1982, Walter Ong wrote: ‘A literate person cannot fully recover a sense of what the word
is to purely oral people’ (p. 12), highlighting the difficulty of considering primary orality
without seeing it as a variant of the written. In the same way, the electronic medium under
review in this chapter can only be investigated by seeing how it is not print. If reading and
writing the printed word were not innate for literate people, we would not be so aware of the
impact of the new technology on our reading, writing and learning.
The Internet has a much larger presence in, and therefore more of an impact on, Western
societies. For example, African nations make up 14 per cent of the world’s population yet
represent only 1.7 per cent of Internet users, compared to North America’s 5.1 per cent of
the world’s population making up 23.8 per cent of users (www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm,
accessed 26 July 2005). My focus, therefore, is on the writing and language practices of the
developed world, although in the future, as Internet technology becomes more widespread,
less-developed countries may experience similar opportunities and challenges to those
faced by the West in the 1980s and 1990s.
In this literature review I begin by providing a historical framework of the printed word and
contextualising the role of the editor, looking at its origins in print culture, although I should
emphasise that this thesis is not about book publishing, or even e-book publishing. To
enable a clearer understanding of the differences between the printed word and hypertext, I
next look at some of the definitions of hypertext by those who are recognised authorities on
the subject. The third section addresses the question of literacy in the electronic medium
and I include some of the theories about the impact on reading, writing and the author, not
all of which have been borne out by my study. This is followed by two sections that look
specifically at website content, both the ability of the general population to self-publish, and
the quality of what appears on websites as those taught to write for print discover a new
medium. I then provide a brief context for the final parts of the review by suggesting that
language has continually been developing, with online written language another phase in its
development. An investigation into how technology and style guides are influencing
people’s language standards is followed by the final section of the review, in which I
examine what shape the role of the editor might take in the future.

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2.1 Setting the stage: the editor and publisher in the print environment
The printing press changed the course of human history. It produced an
information revolution. It changed what human beings know, and how we think.
(Spender 1995, p. 1)
Writing as a technology, which Ong defines as a coded system of visible marks, has existed
since around 3500 BC (1982, p. 83). Cultural definitions of writing have changed over time,
however. In mediaeval Europe, ‘writing’ referred to the transcribing of manuscripts;
authorship was ‘practically unknown before the advent of print technology’ (McLuhan 1967,
p. 122) and scholars were no more than ‘a humble service organization’ (ibid.), responsible
for copying the work of others by hand. The scribe was not the originator of the text; in fact,
‘[any] copyist…who changed anything, was not seen as creative – as making an original
contribution – but was likely to be charged with corrupting the text’ (Spender 1995, p. 2).
Only in the mid-1400s, with the advent of the printing press – a new technology – did writing
come to be viewed as ‘authorship of original material’ (Warschauer 1999, p. 2).
The influence of the church in Europe was reflected in the fact that it was the originator of
the overwhelming majority of manuscripts before the 15th
century. Yet by the early 1700s
the printing press had brought power to a new group of social actors: printers, usually
known as booksellers, who were ‘enlightened businessmen’ (Couturier 1991, p. 17-18) and
printed whatever they thought they could sell. Despite being legally acknowledged as the
‘creator of original works that were his property’ (Baron 2001, p. 69), a writer had little
authority in the printing process, and the editor function as we know it today did not exist.
Professional writers often made their way into print publishing as a ‘proof corrector rather
than an author’ (Febvre and Martin, in Spender 1995, p. 70), and in Britain were not
recognised as owning their intellectual property until the introduction of copyright laws by an
Act of Queen Anne in 1710 (Spender 1995, p. 72).
In From alphabet to email (2001), Baron takes a close look at the evolving relationship
between speech and writing, from the days of manuscripts to the 21st
century. She
demonstrates that the changing notion of what it means to be an author, and the lack of
standardisation of language and punctuation, is nothing new and can be seen developing
throughout history. The apprehension that accompanies new technologies is also an old
concept: scribes commonly objected to the printed book on the basis ‘that it lowered
standards’ (Spender 1995, p. 7). And in 1492, the Abbot of Sponheim stated: ‘Printed

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books will never be the equivalent of handwritten codices, especially since printed books
are often deficient in spelling and appearance’ (Baron 2001, p. 44). Similarly, Ong (1982)
refers to Plato’s suspicion of writing as a ‘mechanical, inhuman way of processing knowledge’
(p. 24) that destroyed the memory. Ong draws an analogy with modern fears of the
introduction of computers (p. 78), and Crystal (2001) discusses a similar reaction to
television in the 1960s (p. 4).
One of the main effects of the printing press was on the appearance of the written word.
Whereas manuscript grammar had varied according to teacher and location (Eisenstein
1983, p. 53), standardisation began as printers recognised the need to appeal to the
broadest possible audience, by eliminating what Spender (1995) called ‘the whims of
spelling and the phrases of dialect which would have made their books less readily
understood by a wide public’ (p. 13), a phenomenon Ong (1982) terms the development of
a ‘grapholect’ (p. 8). Early editors took the form of ‘compositors‘, those in the employ of the
printers who ensured that the style of punctuation ‘fit the printing house’s (or individual
compositor’s) notions of appropriateness’ (Baron 2001, p. 181). This suggests that no
single overarching standard existed, and as Baron points out, ‘just as today’s abundance of
dictionaries and spellcheckers hardly ensures correct spelling…printers’ edicts didn’t
guarantee consistently spelled texts’ (ibid., p. 99). Publishers today still have their own
house style, and an editor’s role and obligation is to apply that style. However, as we will
see, spelling at least is less open to interpretation and personal preference than in the past.
While the typewriter may have been credited in 1882 as an aid to learning to ‘read, write,
spell, and punctuate’ (McLuhan 1964, p. 282), the advent of the first word processing
computer in the early 1980s had a more profound impact on the roles of the editor and
writer. Conventions that had formed over centuries of print meant that authors, typesetters,
graphic designers and editors had clearly defined roles in the publishing process. The new
technology suddenly empowered the author (or editor, academic or bookseller) to control
the whole process, from writing, editing and submitting ‘manuscripts’ to marketing and
distributing the finished product (Feeney 1985, back cover). Yet Feeney’s 1985 guide to
new methods and techniques for publishers showed a lack of foresight, reluctant to advocate
a move away from the traditional print-based editing system, as ‘copy editors make poor
keyboarders and it is uneconomic, therefore, to copy-edit at a terminal’ (ibid., p. 28). As we
now know, by the late 1980s the word processor had found its way into homes and schools

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in Western societies, and in 1994 the World Wide Web was launched, giving the masses
access to a new technology and a new form of writing – hypertext.
2.2 Defining hypertext
The concept of the book…has been replaced by the text, fragmented,
contradictory, incomplete, relativistic, arbitrary and indeterminate. (Kernan
1990, p. 144)
Snyder’s 1996 book, Hypertext: the electronic labyrinth, remains one of the definitive texts
on the subject of writing in the electronic medium. At a time when the Web was in its
infancy, she addresses the impact of electronic writing on the reader and writer, and
discusses the implications for teaching. Whereas the printed page fostered a ‘sense of
closure’ (Ong 1982, p. 132), Snyder describes hypertext as ‘essentially a network of links
between words, ideas and sources that has neither a centre nor an end’ (p. 18), and
explains how readers construct their own ‘hybrid documents based on associational links
rather than linear sequences’ (p. 17), thus differentiating it from word processing and
desktop publishing.
This builds on Landow’s discussions of hypertext before the Web was invented. He writes
of the need to abandon ‘ideas of center, margin, hierarchy, and linearity, and replace them
with ones of multilinearity, nodes, links and networks’ (1992, p. 2). In particular, it is this
ability to create links between pieces of information that ‘disturbs our linear notion of texts
by disrupting conventional structures and expectations associated with the medium of print’
(Snyder 1996, p. 17).
In the organisational setting, it is clear that the Web has a great deal to offer. In 2000, the
Australian Government embraced the electronic medium and its features, ‘which enhance
the value and usefulness of the information. Hypertext links, history, backtracking,
annotations, bookmarks, formatted copying and printing are functions which paper products
cannot provide’ (Guidelines for Commonwealth Information Published in Electronic Formats
2000, p. 31).
Links – specifically their ability to create intertextuality – are one of the defining features of
hypertext, and indeed of organisational website writing today. Bolter (1991) describes the

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intertextual relationship as occurring ‘everywhere’ in print (p. 164), providing examples of
novels, magazines, encyclopaedias, grammars, and dictionaries. The difference is that ‘the
electronic space permits us to visualize intertextuality as no previous medium has done’ (ibid.).
While websites have certainly fulfilled Bolter’s vision of intertextuality, the electronic medium
offers a paradoxical situation whereby a website can offer less choice than a printed
publication, through either the deliberate choice of the site’s creator, or bad design.
Spyridakis (2000) posits that the ‘reading of print materials can in fact be more nonlinear
than reading of hypertext because the routes with print documents are endless and the
routes in hypertext are constrained by links’ (p. 359). David Crystal (2001) believes that the
website owner ‘has total control over what we may see and what may be accessed, and
also what links we may follow’ (p. 203), a situation that has no equivalent in print: even if the
author of a printed book chose to give the book no chapters, no headings, even no page
numbers, a reader could still open it at any stage and move around to a different part, or
read it from start to finish and make sense of it. If a website owner creates a page that has
no links leading out of it – by accident or by design – a search engine can still index it,
providing a way in but leaving the reader effectively stranded once they reach that page.
It became clear by the mid-1990s that to enable a full understanding of the impact of
intertextuality, hyperlinking, and the interconnectedness of content and design, the medium
required the teaching of a new literacy to acknowledge the impact of this new writing space.
2.3 The new medium demands a new literacy
What we have at present is an intriguing technology whose operations compel
us to radically revise our print-derived notions of reading, writing, text, language
and closure. (Snyder 1996, p. 122)
Print literacy is defined as ‘the ability to read and write’ (Tuman 1992, p. 2) but, in the
computer age, it becomes difficult to retain this definition when the meanings of ‘reading’
and ‘writing’ have changed and become unstable (ibid.).
In Literacy Beyond Books (2000), Nancy Kaplan explores ‘the meanings embedded in the
term [literacy] and the values attached to it’ (p. 210) and responds to the feeling among
some professors of literature that the World Wide Web is causing a literacy crisis (p. 208).
She suggests that the concerns about literacy caused by widespread new technology are

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not new, and that it is less about the technology, and more about those who fear the
implications for society, such as a loss of power and authority: ‘The same sort of plaint rises
every time a new technology for writing begins to permeate the cultural sphere’ (ibid.).
As computers began to appear in schools and universities for teaching purposes in the
1980s, two main camps arose: those who embraced the change, and the free flow of
ideas and information facilitated by the electronic medium, which at last enabled the
deconstructionists to demonstrate what they had been trying to communicate for decades;
and those who foresaw a decline in print literacy as the authority of the author was eroded,
and the characteristics and impact of hypertext removed the student’s ability to reflect on
the text and thus construct literary theory.
Myron Tuman’s unease that the ‘champions’ of hypertext were seeking a new literacy
practice to get rid of the hierarchy of the print they know (1992, p. 78) is in stark contrast to
those ‘champions‘, such as Lanham, Bolter and Landow, who celebrate the ability of
hypertext to facilitate ‘a critical and dynamic approach to literacy that is an extension of the
best traditions of the print world and finally fulfils the vision of critical literacy to reconfigure
the text, author, and reader’ (Warschauer 1999, pp. 11-12). Kellner (2002) envisions a
broader definition of literacy that includes technical knowledge and skills (p. 162) but sees
online literacy as a continuity of the old, not a replacement: ‘Traditional print literacy takes
on increasing importance in the computer-mediated cyberworld as people need to critically
scrutinise and scroll tremendous amounts of information, putting new emphasis on
developing reading and writing abilities’ (ibid., p. 158).
According to Kaplan (2000), Tuman’s primary concern is that the links in a hypertext
prevent scholars from truly contemplating the text, as their existence disrupts the cognitive
process. She sees this concept of literacy as ‘an idealized condition’ (p. 219), and is critical
of literary theorists Myron Tuman and Sven Birkerts for applying the terms ‘literacy’ and
‘reading’ to only ‘critical reading’ (p. 215).
Technology itself does not appear to change literacy; more precisely, new technology
changes society, and that has an impact on literacy (Warschauer 1999, p. 1). It took the
industrial revolution, not just the invention of the printing press, to create mass literacy in
Europe, demonstrating how ‘technological change intersects with other social, cultural and
political factors to help determine how literacy is practiced’ (Warschauer 1999, p. 3). For

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Kaplan also, it is the prevailing ‘material, social, and economic conditions’ that affect literacy
(2000, p. 212). In the 21st
century, the prevailing conditions are of people having less time
and being confronted with so-called ‘information overload’, which may contribute to the
behaviour of scanning and skipping around text to find as much as possible, as fast as
possible (Ohi 2001, p. 11).
The effect of the word processor in homes and classrooms in the 1980s was to begin to blur
the boundary between language, design and technology, raising issues for editors, readers
and writers. It was no longer possible to take for granted the literacy that had become
innate – new forms of literacy were needed. The vision that Tuman had in 1992 was of a
new type of literacy: Online literacy would be ‘more practical, less theoretical, and new
literates themselves [will be] valued to the extent that they are team players, not traditional
intellectuals’ (Tuman 1992, p. 123), placing an emphasis on ‘collaboration and
communication’ (ibid.). Similarly, Warschauer (1999) describes the characteristics of the
information revolution as ‘a flattened hierarchy, multiskilled labor, team-based work, and
just-in-time production and distribution’ (p. 9). Tuman’s vision seems to have become reality.
The reader and writer roles are redefined
Changes in our traditional understanding of the terms reader and writer, and the boundaries
between them, are discussed at length in the literature on hypertext. The electronic
medium has the effect of making people aware of the part technology plays in the creation
of text in a way that had become invisible, or ‘unchallenged’ with print (Reinking 1997, p.
630). Reinking suggests that this new awareness ‘may lead us to reflect about how
technology affects reading and writing, which in turn affects our conceptions of literacy’
(ibid.). Spender goes so far as to suggest that the terms reader and writer are ‘almost
meaningless in the cyber-context’ (1995, p. 90), supporting Tuman’s statement in 1992: ‘We
have hardly begun to ask...how giving all writers the ability to produce published forms of
their own texts will affect our notion of authorship or how giving them the ability to integrate
graphics into their documents will affect our notion of writing’ (p. 58).
Bolter recognised the impact that the new medium would have on the reader and writer,
creating a whole new writing space. His seminal book, Writing Space (1991), explores the
effect of the electronic medium on the way we think, particularly when the reader changes
roles to become the creator of a text. The fact that hypertext enables the writer to move
text around on screen and edit easily has an impact on the way we approach writing.

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Snyder (1996) draws heavily on Bolter’s earlier work, describing how ‘writing with a
computer blurs the line between thinking and writing but also shapes to some extent the
ways in which we think’ (p. 5). She sees the electronic writing space as enabling ‘an
interactive relationship between writer and reader’ (p. 3).
A new type of author emerges
The collaborative nature of online writing, its lack of boundaries between texts and lack of
textual autonomy (Landow 1992, p. 74), combine to undermine the idea of what we mean
and understand by ‘author’. According to Alvin Kernan (1990), by the 1980s, ‘the author,
whose creative imagination had been said to be the source of literature, was declared dead
or the mere assembler of various bits of language and culture into writings that were…simply
cultural collages or “texts”’ (p. 2). In this environment, the author of a text ‘is merely the
personage charged with collecting and arranging such material’ (Snyder 1996, p. 63).
Yet not all those who have written on the subject believe that the changing role of the
author is a phenomenon particular to the Web: as Naomi Baron (2001) demonstrates,
Foucault, in 1977, envisioned the individual author being replaced by ‘author-function’ (p.
92) and also in the 1970s, in The Death of the Author, Barthes challenged the notion of
traditional authorship: ‘The meaning of the text is found…in the mind of the reader’ (ibid.).
Rather than indicating an epistemic change, then, it appears that the arrival of the computer
began an overlap between the two literacies, as Poster (1995) asserts: ‘Periods or epochs
do not succeed but implicate one another, do not replace but supplement one another, are
not consecutive but simultaneous’ (p. 21). Poster also sees electronic writing as ‘[continuing]
the tendency begun with handwriting and print: it enables the removal of the author from the
text, increases the distance, both spatial and temporal, of the author from the reader and
augments the problem of the interpretation of texts’ (ibid., p. 69). Similarly, Tuman (1992, p.
66) believed that the new literacy would ‘enhance’ the old, not replace it immediately.
The future for authoring, according to Tuman, means a return to the manuscript days of
multiple authorship, when old ‘scriptors’ wrote the work of others and added to it,
‘commentators’ added their own work to others’ to explain it and ‘auctors’ added others’
work to explain their own (1992, p. 64). In this context, the writer would be responsible for
decisions over the appearance and layout of the text, removing the need for an editor.

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Snyder (1996, p. 8) is confident that writers trained in print will adjust to the demands of
online literacy.
2.4 The democratisation of Web publishing
People who have been taught nothing about their own language are (contrary to
educational expectations) spending all their leisure hours attempting to string
sentences together for the edification of others. And there is no editing on the
Internet! (Truss 2003, p. 17)
Throughout its history, the printing press has reinforced the divide between the reader and
the writer, mainly for reasons of economics. Bolter (1991) sees the ‘costly and laborious
task’ of printing (p. 148) as widening that divide, and is critical of the attitude that ‘the act of
printing itself makes these opinions worthy of our attention’ (ibid., p. 149). The ‘new writing
space’ at the heart of Bolter’s book removes the ‘special’ nature of being an author (p. 152),
since almost anyone (in the affluent Western world, at least) can become an author through
this new technology.
In the Web environment of democratised authorship, ‘there will be no teacher, editor,
publisher or bookseller to vet or validate what goes public; it could soon mean the end of
the rejection slip and the demise of the gatekeeper’ (Spender 1995, p. 86). McAlpine
welcomes the prospect of self-publishing more positively, seeing the Web as providing
authors with ‘no excuse for languishing in the shadows, mournfully unpublished. They can
no longer blame the cold hearts and bad judgment of editors who reject their precious
manuscripts.’ (McAlpine 2001, p. 225). However, in the case of the eBook she is
describing, she does acknowledge the value of the editor intervention in the process to
‘correct the grammar or cut the excess verbiage’ (ibid., p. 229).
The lack of a central control – such as an editor – to determine whether texts are worthy of
being published has resulted in people today using the World Wide Web to publish anything
and everything, which, as Yellowlees-Douglas points out, includes a great deal of work that
‘no publisher would ever be caught putting into circulation’ (n.d., p. 1). The ease with which
‘every computer-equipped, reasonably wired person can be a publisher or “content
provider”’ (Moulthrop 2000, p. 267) has led to an explosion in online publishing over the
decade of the Web’s existence: In September 2005, popular search engine Google™
indexed more than eight billion website pages (www.google.com.au, 17 September 2005).

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In one sense, this fulfils the vision of the man credited with inventing the Web, Tim Berners-
Lee, whereby ‘anyone (authorised) should be able to publish and correct information and
anyone (authorised) should be able to read it’ (Berners-Lee 1999, pp. 41-42).
While information can certainly be easily published and read on the Web, Berners-Lee’s
expectation of anyone being able to ‘correct’ information has certainly not come to pass.
True, the electronic medium offers a feature without parallel in print, that of correcting, or
updating, information over time in a way that cannot be compared with the issuing of errata
or new editions of printed books. But literature suggests that attitudes towards the Web as a
medium remove any sense of urgency over correcting mistakes. This perception is clear in
McAlpine’s writing guide, in which she suggests that ‘…it’s never too late to fix the words
on a web site’ (McAlpine 2001, p. 2). It is a sentiment shared by Gerstner (1998), who
says: ‘It’s not like print, where mistakes live forever. You can change the web site
tomorrow’ (p. 17).
The medium does allow for many inaccuracies to be corrected, be they factual or
grammatical, and for arguments to be updated as further studies are conducted. This,
Burbules believes, results in ‘more highly refined content, via multiple revisions: correcting
errors…modifying works’ (1998, p. 117), although he continues: ‘Such relentless tinkering
for the sake of marginal improvements can become wearisome, and it is doubtful how many
readers would continue to reread versions of a paper to get the latest state of an author’s
thinking’ (ibid., p. 121). The role of the editor is still not mentioned as part of this process;
the assumption here is that the author will be doing his or her own correcting. A significant
disadvantage of this flexibility is that a website author can remove all traces of an argument
published only on the Web, without any thought to those that may have quoted and
referenced the article. The only proof would be if the researcher had printed or
electronically stored a copy of the article at the time it was accessed. Similarly, a gross
error in a study published on a website might be seen, believed, and even printed by
thousands of readers before a correction is issued.

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2.5 Developing the skills for the medium
The method of delivering the message to the viewer has changed almost
beyond recognition, but the fundamental principles which govern the
manipulation of characters, words and pages in the ‘old’ world of print
typography are still vitally important. (Pring 1999, Introduction)
The early days of the Internet and hypertext led to demands for a complete rethink about
our approach to writing, as the electronic medium began to reshape our thinking. Some
people took the time to learn a new literacy to help them approach hypertext in a different
way but the results of self-publishing, both written and visual language, vary widely. As
Crystal (2001) points out: ‘Just because a new visual language is available to everyone
does not mean that everyone can use it well’ (p. 46). The websites that Crystal refers to as
‘untutored typographical hotchpotches’ (ibid., p. 204), and Dorner (2001) considers ‘uneven
at best and dismal at worst’ (p. 115), indicate that amateur publishers have not yet become
Web literate. Other writers add their lament about the standards of writing and layout of
those with no experience or training, including Burbules (1998, p. 118), Ohi (2001, p. 3),
and Baron (2001, p. 215).
In print publishing, ‘several pairs of eyes may scrutinize a document…publishers provide
copy-editors and proof-readers to eradicate unintended idiosyncrasy and implement house
style’ Crystal (p. 207). It must be questioned, therefore, whether the poor quality of amateur
websites is due to the medium being different, or to what Crystal describes as the ‘checks
and balances’ (ibid.) being absent, one of which would traditionally have been the editor.
Judy Gregory believes that there are many similarities between writing for print and writing
for the Web, which would suggest that the lack of an editor as part of the checking system
is the key. In her 2004 article Writing for the Web Versus Writing for Print: Are They Really
So Different?, Gregory aims to debunk some of the much-quoted maxims about writing for
the Web, to demonstrate how similar the two can be, and in fact how writers for certain
genres of print writing could benefit from employing characteristics of what is accepted as
being ‘good’ website writing. She examines seven of the key differences highlighted
between print and website writing, and concludes that ‘many of the underlying principles of
writing apply to both media’ (Gregory 2004, p. 276). This argument is supported by authors
of writers’ guides, such as McAlpine (2001), according to whom, ‘the hallmarks of good
writing are identical, whether the writing appears on paper or on a monitor, whether it’s a
novel, a business proposal, or a web page’ (p. 10), and Jennie Eley, website reviewer for

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the Plain English Campaign: ‘Whatever medium they are writing for, people need to keep
their language plain and their sentences short!’ (McManus 2003, p. 82).
For Gregory, genre – that is, the ‘recognizable communicative purposes of documents’
(2004, p. 281) – is a more useful method of comparison between print and Web publishing.
Crowston and Williams (2000), in their article Reproduced and emergent genres of
communication on the World Wide Web, assert that ‘genres are useful because they make
communications more easily recognizable and understandable by recipients’ (p. 203).
Similarly, Crystal considers genre to be important when considering the appropriateness of
language: ‘I read innumerable Web sites where the content demands longer and more
sophisticated exposition. It is unlikely that a single principle of economy could ever explain
the variety of uses, intentions, tastes, and effects which give the Internet its character’
(Crystal 2001, p. 76).
One of the most-quoted articles among texts about website writing is a 1997 study by
Morkes and Nielsen, Concise, SCANNABLE and Objective: How to Write for the Web.
Among their findings, the authors discover that ‘scanning is the norm, that text should be
short (or at least broken up), that users like summaries and the inverted pyramid style…’
(Morkes and Nielsen 1997, Study 1: Findings). This key phrase ‘or at least broken up’
seems to have been overlooked by most authors of Web writing guides. In the Morkes and
Nielsen study, the text they tested cut 50 per cent from the text written in ‘promotional’
language, which they themselves considered to contain ‘exaggeration, subjective claims,
and boasting, rather than simple facts’ (ibid., p. 11). Despite this context, the ‘cut by 50 per
cent rule’ for moving print text to screen is advocated without qualification by writers
including Price and Price (2002, p. 96), McAlpine (2001, p. 36), Fichter (2001, p. 82) and
Kilian (in Ohi 2001, p. 10).
This attitude of those who advocate cutting text in half is, according to Gregory, ‘general
and context free…at best, overly simplistic’ (Gregory 2004, p. 277). Spyridakis (2000)
quotes the same study but interprets the findings as supporting multiple, short pages, rather
than simply halving the text (p. 363). For her, ‘the goal of conciseness should be to improve
clarity by deleting unnecessary words, phrases, and excess details, and by manipulating
syntactic structures’ (p. 370). Others see the characteristics of good writing being similar in
print and online, such as Kellner, for whom the various forms of Internet writing – chat,
email, forums – underline ‘the importance of clarity and precision’ (Kellner 2002, p. 158).

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Unlike her print predecessors, the website editor has a free hand when it comes to creating
a message for the intended audience, unconstrained by the boundaries of page size or
document length.
2.6 Dealing with an ever-changing language
Language changes constantly without reference to anyone, including editors:
the editor can only manage change, never control it. (McDonell 2004, p. 24)
Language over the centuries has been shaped by editors, along with writers of style guides
and usage manuals, dictionary makers, teachers and newspaper columnists (Burridge
2004, p. 16). The role of the editor, what McDonell (2004) describes as the ‘public’ function
of the editor, is ‘gatekeeper of the language, guarding the portals against the ravages of
those who don’t mind – or worse, know – their “p’s” and “q’s”’ (p. 22). Editor intervention
has always been a critical part of the print publishing process, imposing and thus
maintaining the prevailing standards of language, grammar and punctuation. It is important
to note, however, that just as language use varied between early printing houses, today’s
‘house style’ can vary between organisations in its preferred punctuation and rigidity of
grammar. Even sentence length, which has become ‘steadily shorter’ (Haussamen 1994, p.
9) since the 1700s, is ’only a moment in the evolution of style’ (ibid., p. 24).
Language is changing because it always has, as Spender describes: ‘What was good form
in one generation becomes undesirable in the next, and vice versa: words, phrases, usages
that were once unacceptable are now widely used’ (Spender 1995, p. 9). Spelling has
varied significantly through the ages, showing ‘considerable variety’ in the 17th
century
(Baron 2001, p. 57) and punctuation was only introduced to make it easier to read aloud. In
1996, the Macquarie dictionary (second edition) had ‘on-line’ as the accepted form of the
word. By the third edition in 2002, the entry had changed to ‘online…also on-line’. Other
terms linked to the electronic medium are also becoming more conveniently compact, such
as ‘website’, ‘email’ and ‘homepage’, suggesting that change is continuing apace.
Significant research has been conducted to ascertain whether electronic writing is closer to
spoken language than to written language. While that is not the focus of this thesis, it is
impossible to discuss website writing without acknowledging briefly the other forms in which
writing appears on the Internet, in particular role-playing ‘MUD’ games, chat rooms and

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email, all of which seem to suggest that electronic writing closes the gap between speech
and print that was widened by the printing press (Haussamen 1994, p. 20). O’Neill,
Fountaine and Sligo (2002) see the Internet and email as encouraging people to use ‘quick,
less formal English’ (p. 95), and according to Turkle, in her book about the impact of the
Internet on identity, ‘a relaxed attitude towards sentence fragments and typographic errors
suggest that the new writing is somewhere between traditional writing and oral
communication’ (1997, p. 183). Naomi Baron (2002) posits that while punctuation in email
may reflect the newly emerging relationship between spoken and written English (p. 189),
‘e-mail style reinforces ongoing change rather than initiating it’ (p. 411).
The Internet has not yet been around long enough for people to instinctively know what is,
or is not, acceptable language to use (Crystal, p. 107), raising the significant question of
how many of today’s editors, who were not educated using computers, can learn the skills
they need to publish effectively on the Web.
2.7 The human editor takes a back seat
No-one writing material for online dissemination should ever think they can do
without the intervention of a human copy editor despite the editorial help that is
now available automatically. (Commonwealth Guidelines 2000, p. 60)
In the same way as grammar and punctuation guides abounded as the need arose to
create some form of standardisation for print (Baron 2001, p. 184), so too have website
writing style guides and grammars flourished as a source of knowledge about how to write
for the new medium. Optimistically, McAlpine (2001) advocates that ‘Web writers must
soak in the Web and absorb the conventions by constant exposure and osmosis’ (p. 11).
This fails to acknowledge that what is accessible may not have been written with Web
conventions in mind, and as Fichter (2001) points out, referring here to Intranet writing, ‘the
problem with learning by osmosis is that there are just as many bad examples as there are
good. Do new content providers have the wisdom to know the difference?’ (p. 82).
A similar problem for those seeking to replace the editor function with a guide is knowing
which one to use. While publications such as the Macquarie Dictionary and Strunk and
White’s Elements of Style are widely accepted in Australia as the bases of appropriate
language and grammar usage, Crystal (2001) is correct in stating that for the Internet ‘no e-

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corpus of this kind yet exists, and so it is inevitable that guides…will contain a great deal
that is subjective, expressing personal or institutional taste’ (p. 73). So many options exist
that Durham examined the proliferation of ‘how-to’ guides in her 2000 study Organisational
websites: How, and how well, do they communicate? The results showed that ‘in a large
number of guidelines…the material found was often overwhelmingly unsubstantiated and
often highly idiosyncratic’ (p. 3), and that many style guides ‘rely on writing and design
“folklore”, with little substantiated evidence’ (ibid., p. 4).
Baron is critical of what she calls ‘self-proclaimed language authorities’ (2002, p. 404) who
decide on what constitutes correct spelling and usage with no thought for linguistic
conventions. She is not alone in singling out Hale and Scanlon’s Wired Style for particular
criticism (ibid., p. 405): Crawford Kilian, in his online article ‘Against Wired’ (1996), states
his feelings unequivocally: ‘If Wired Style’s style is contemptible, it is also both antique and
immature’. Yet this printed book (ironically not published online) is seen by many as the
definitive writing style guide for the electronic medium, and writers such as McManus (2003,
p. 85) and De Wolk (2001, p. 93) propose using it if you have no other guide. This sharp
divide between the camps can be understood by looking at some of the comments in Wired
Style, which include:
‘Treat the institutions and players in your world with a dose of irreverence. Play with
grammar and syntax. Appreciate unruliness.’ (p. 15)
‘When it comes to a choice of what’s on the Web and what’s in Webster’s
[Dictionary], we tend to go with the Web.’ (p. 2)
‘We like the way many tech upstarts defy conventions for capitalization such as iMac
at the beginning of a sentence.’ (p. 187)
They presume that digital writing demands the colloquial, and are critical of the ‘starchy’
nature of traditional style manuals (Hale and Scanlon 1999, p. 2).
Editing with ease
One way in which the first word processors were seen to have an advantage over print
publishing was their ability to take the ‘drudgery’ out of editing and revising (Feeney 1985,
p. 6), allowing the writer to get on with the job of writing. The development of spelling- and
grammar-checking programs was also seen as a way of reducing the interference with the
process of writing and editing, encouraging what Reinking (1997) called ‘new strategies for
writing, less inhibited by a concern for spelling’ (p. 640). By the mid 1980s, text-editing

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programs were able to check for spelling and punctuation errors, grammatical errors such
as split infinitives, and even ‘sexist phrases’ (Feeney 1985, p. 6), although Feeney is quick
to point out that ‘human contribution is required to pick up errors of fact and controversial
points, and to make qualifying comments and suggestions’ (ibid.). Bush takes this idea a
step further, suggesting that what he calls ‘robotic editing’ may cause the result to be less
accurate than the original by ‘encouraging [editors] to rigidly insert rule bound “corrections”
that make the copy logically wrong’ (1992, p. 115).
Modern word processing programs undoubtedly enable the author to check grammar and
spelling with very little effort and have become particularly important as more and more
organisations have websites, with staff from around the organisation contributing to content.
This easy access to programs that apparently tell us what is acceptable writing, and more
importantly what is not, may result in the human editor being seen as an unnecessary step
in the electronic publishing process – until you look closely at the accuracy of some
programs. Crystal describes the spelling checks and grammar checks available in software
packages as prescriptive ‘in an intrusive and arbitrary form’ (2001, pp. 66-67), and refers to
the ‘pedants’ in software companies (p. 212) who interfere with a writer’s style. Yet he
sounds the alarm by stating that online dictionaries and grammar guides are likely to
influence usage ‘much more than their Fowlerian counterparts ever did’ (ibid.).
Even worse is the tendency of some programs, acting as the new gatekeepers of the
language, to make incorrect suggestions, such as a spell checker removing the hyphen
from a word that should have one (Michele Grossman, pers. comm. June 2005). Bishop
(2005) tested the standard Microsoft grammar checker and found it lacking, with failures
that included ‘skipping misplaced apostrophes, singular-plural inconsistencies, missing
articles, sentence fragments, improper capitalization and other problems’, leading this
Assistant Professor of Linguistics and Computer Science at Stanford University – the title
itself indicative of how times are changing – to conclude that even if the grammar check
was improved, ‘it still wouldn’t be as good as a good human editor’ (ibid.). This may sound
like good news for editors, who will still be needed to ensure that content is accurate, but
the danger is that Microsoft grammar will become definitive simply by being used more than
any other grammar guide. Baron (2001) talks of the disturbing trend in education of
children’s ‘increasing dependence upon such tools, rather than pressing themselves to test
their memories, to sound out words, or to look them up in the dictionary’ (p. 213). This
increasing reliance on software seems to be the next phase in the reduction of our reliance

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on memory, which began with the development of the alphabet and was compounded by
the printing press (cf Ong). The Internet allows us to forget everything other than where to
find the facts; we don’t need to remember the facts themselves (Reich, in Warschauer
1999, p. 15).
Along with new standards in grammar and spelling, the general consensus is that
punctuation will decrease. From its original function as an ‘aide-mémoire for the public
performance of a written text’ (Lanham 1993, p. 127), many would now view it as an
irritation, one more thing to learn and remember. For Haussamen, a decrease in
punctuation use simply reflects a natural progression, and ‘some of our correct punctuation
rules will look as excessive in the year 2200 as some eighteenth-century punctuation rules
do to us now’ (Haussamen 1994, p. 21-22). Price and Price (2002) see a more practical
reason for using language rather than punctuation to convey meaning in content that is
displayed on screen: ‘[understanding can] rely too heavily on little punctuation marks the
reader can miss’ (p. 108).
Opinion is divided over whether this ‘informal and grammatically very “relaxed” kind of
language’ (Deuze 1999, p. 379) produced by the Internet is a positive change or signals a
decline in standards. Spender (1995) insists that the standardised features of print are
becoming less important: ‘there is no longer the same need for standardisation, for
definitions of spelling, pronunciation and meaning. It is no coincidence that word
processors have spellcheckers…as well as a thesaurus…but generally no dictionary with
definitions and set, standardised forms’ (p. 23). This, she believes, is not a drop in
standards; it is a ‘change in medium…it may even be an improvement’ (p. 11). Other
writers, such as Kernan, ‘wince’ at the tendency in the media of ‘the old rules of grammar
being broken, anarchy overtaking spelling, comma fault and dangling modifiers becoming
brazen, and the jargons of a pompous dullness being amplified and broadcast with high-
wattage sound equipment’ (Kernan 1990, p. 169). Similarly for Spyridakis, a Professor in
Technical Communication, ‘readers expect information on Web pages to be accurate and
free from typos and other errors that reveal carelessness or ignorance’ (2000, p. 373) and
later: ‘errors and inconsistencies across pages…raise doubts about the author’s credibility’
(ibid., p. 373). Ten years ago, Spender (1995) asked whether opening up publishing to
everyone would result in authorship losing its ‘status and credibility’ (p. 81). The
democratisation of publishing may have decreased the authority of the author as a
profession, and resulted in there being ‘almost certainly…more garbage than work of

- 33 -
quality’ (Burbules 1998, p106), but credibility remains an important issue. Credibility is
judged via the grammatical and typographical as well as factual correctness. As the
findings of my study will show, factual correctness remains vital, but opinion in the literature
remains divided over whether grammatical correctness needs to be maintained at the same
level on the Web as in print.
In their study into perceptions of error, O’Neill, Fountaine and Sligo (2002) discovered that
‘as more people cease to view particular errors as errors, the errors become gradually
acceptable’ (p. 94). Without an editor as gatekeeper, much of the written content appearing
on the Web is not being properly checked, the implications being cause for concern for
Baron, according to whom ‘unmonitored self-publication may come to redefine public
standards of acceptability for the written word’ (Baron 2001, p. 215). In this looser linguistic
environment, the editor, with a ‘keen eye for the ill-chosen word, the grammatical error, the
infelicities of style and punctuation’ (Burridge 2004, p. 210-211), may well become redundant.
2.8 The changing role of the editor
You have to be your own editor. That’s called being an adult in the information
age. (Baron 2001, p. 267)
The new environment offers a challenge for editors that surpasses the need to simply learn
a new literacy with its new rules and regulations. In this medium, ‘computer language rules
(grammar) are first stated and thereafter used’ (Ong 1982, p. 7), and the grammar of
hypertext, which enables us to understand what is being communicated within the
discursive framework of electronic writing, includes not only language but also space and
colour, images and sound. The spaces, paragraphs, font style and footnotes of the printed
book that ‘go largely unnoticed as visual elements’ by the contemporary writer (Landow
1992, p. 46), suddenly become a highly visible part of electronic writing, as Lanham (1993)
comments: ‘We have come to regard print as so inevitable that we have ceased to notice its
extraordinary stylization’ (pp. 73-74). Web publishers have access to ‘a range of
typographic and colour variations that far exceeds the pen, the typewriter and the early
word processor’ (Crystal 2001, p. 46), suggesting that website editors need to learn new
skills in order to offer value that is one step ahead of the general publishing public.

- 34 -
Hypertext may have resulted in a loss of writer authority over the written word, but Landow,
for one, believes that the opportunity the medium presents for writers to affect the visual
appearance of their text is important, even ‘empowering’ (Landow 1992, p. 49). In his view,
plenty of books are examples of bad design, with narrow margins and too-small type; and
the assumption that the visual elements are less important than the words is a social
construction (ibid., p. 50). Snyder, too, talks of the tendency among writers to ‘internalise’
the idea that non-verbal information is less important than the writing, and is the business of
‘publishers, designers and printers, not of writers’ (Snyder 1996, p. 18). Advice from the
Council of Australian Societies of Editors (CASE – now the Institute of Professional Editors)
makes it clear that all editors need to be aware of the use of design elements ‘to convey
meaning and enhance readability’ (Australian Standards for Editing Practice 2001, p. 3).
Writing from the viewpoint of the graphic designer, Kalantzis (2001) illustrates the changing
roles of those involved in the publishing process since the arrival of word processors. She
describes as ‘parallel’ the electronic workflow process, rather than ‘consecutive’ as it is in
print publishing (p. 63). Where once editors were involved at every stage – dealing with
authors and typesetters, and handling the text structure, checking proofs and making
corrections (p. 60) – now their role has shrunk in the sense that text and images are marked
up by ‘creators’ who are a mixture of editor and graphic designer (p. 63). Her reaction to
this change is that writers and editors are thus entering a space ‘traditionally considered to
be the exclusive domain of graphic design’ (p. 66), although an alternative interpretation
could be that the graphic designer is infiltrating the domain of the writer.
In addition to an understanding of graphic design, website editors are also expected to have
a certain level of technical skill and an understanding of the intricacies of Web publishing
technology. It is telling that McManus, in his article, ‘How to write for the Web’, provides
HTML coding tips to help writers format their work (McManus 2003, p. 82), while McAlpine
(2001) includes ‘an understanding of Web culture…detailed knowledge of how search
engines work’ in her list of skills required in writing for the Web (p. 219). Indeed the
Australian Standards for Editing Practice (2001) has an impressive catalogue of skills
required of the modern editor: ‘Publication planning, editing, designing, formatting,
proofreading, navigation, indexing, print production (e.g. production checking, binding,
distribution), screen-based procedures (e.g. programming, testing, uploading or replication,
site maintenance) and marketing...’ (p. 1).

- 35 -
In the context of a company website, content is often provided by a range or team of
people, each with their own writing style and appreciation of the medium. According to
Crowston and Williams (2000), many organisations see the Web ‘primarily as a cheap
means of publishing information’ (p. 201), the danger being that they are not taking the
trouble to adapt the information to the medium. This idea is borne out by Price and Price
(2002), who criticise the ‘impersonal style’ of printed communication from corporations,
universities, and governments, and the fact that ‘in the rush to fill up Web sites, a lot of this
faceless prose got posted’ (p. 31). Having a multi-skilled editor who can take responsibility
for content, layout and distribution offers significant efficiencies of time and hence lower costs.
The medium has led to such an increase in writing that some, such as McAlpine, see the
demand for good website writers and editors as having grown (2001, p. 7). At the same
time, the abundance of software programs and ‘how-to’ tools may lead content providers to
believe that anyone can be an editor, devaluing editing as a recognised skill. Turkle (1997)
says: ‘Once I would have thought of it as editing. Now with computer software, moving
sentences and paragraphs about is just part of writing’ (p. 29), a perception that does not
bode well for the future of the editor. Some see the editors’ skills as becoming diluted as
they are forced to become programmers and designers in order to maintain their place in
the online world, and Jane Dorner, for example, wishes that ‘…the new era of e-this and e-
that would value people trained to edit words as highly as it values graphic designers…or
programmers’ (2001, p. 89).
2.9 Contextualising perceptions about the medium
When word processors first appeared, much was written about the possible impact on
standards of literacy, of teaching, and on language in general as the electronic environment
causes us to think differently about how we read and write. What some, such as Tuman,
saw as presaging a decline in literacy, others such as Kaplan, Snyder and Landow saw as
presenting new opportunities for teaching and learning. Twenty years on, the issue of
computer literacy is becoming less prominent in Western societies as new generations grow
up with computers and technology a part of their daily lives. At the same time, it should be
acknowledged that the debate over the teaching of English reading and writing is returning
to the surface, with a move away from the ‘whole language’ approach to reading.

- 36 -
Opinion differs over whether the medium itself has caused a change in our language
standards or whether, as Spender and Haussamen point out, language has always been
changing, and we are simply in the next phase of its progression. The characteristics of the
Internet encourage what Baron and Crystal identify as a movement towards oral language
in our written communication but it is, as yet, too early to see what the future holds.
Clearly, the World Wide Web has democratised publishing, although writers such as
Spender are quick to point out that this only applies to first-world societies. In addition,
there seems to be little doubt that the medium requires a different approach from writers, as
is visible in the plethora of guides on how to write for the Web, and the existence of
programs that enable any writer to instantly become their own editor. Yet the role of editors
has come under much less scrutiny than the website content they are editing. The literature
reveals a lack of investigation into what people think about the medium, and what impact
their perceptions about editors and editing have on the standard of language they use – and
come to expect – on websites. Coupled with this is the challenge facing the editor, whose
skills – which were so visible in the print publishing process – have been variously
undermined (Dorner 2001) or broadened (McManus 2003, Price and Price 2002). Against a
backdrop of changing literacy and language in an online world, I now turn to those
perceptions and consider what the implications might be for the editor as we know her.

- 37 -
Figure 1: Thinking about websites, how important are the following elements to you?
Group 1: RANKED the items from one to six:
Website structure makes it easy to find information 4.2
Information is factually accurate 3.9
Writing style makes it easy to read 3.6
Spelling and grammar are good 3.4
Design is attractive 3.1
Information is up-to-date 2.8
Group 2: gave each item a SCORE out of six:
Information is factually accurate 6.0
Information is up-to-date 5.9
Website structure makes it easy to find information 5.8
Writing style makes it easy to read 5.5
Spelling and grammar are good 5.4
Design is attractive 4.8
Part 3: Research findings and discussion
As explained in Part One, I conducted an online research survey of communications
professionals in non-profit and public-sector organisations. The survey gathered mainly
qualitative responses from 20 people – the majority female and in the age bracket 25 to 34
– on their perceptions about different aspects of websites as a form of communication and
their views of the editor’s role in Web publishing. The findings below include extracts from
respondents’ comments; a copy of the participants’ full responses can be found in
Appendix C.
Websites as a medium for communication
3.1 Elements of a website
Different groups of people are likely to place different levels of importance on the elements
of a website such as written content, design, navigation and functionality. To find out how
the participants view websites as a medium for communication, I asked them about these
different elements. Although the survey had been pre-tested to check that the terms used
were understandable, nine participants understood the first question to mean that the items
should be ranked from one to six (which was the intention), and 11 gave each item a score
out of six. The nature of Web surveys means that it is not feasible for participants to ask for
clarification on questions during the survey (Reips 2000, p. 111) so it is not clear whether any
participant found this question confusing. I have therefore grouped the responses into ‘group
1’ – those who ranked the items – and ‘group 2’ – those who scored them (Figure 1 below).

- 38 -
The results show significant differences between the two groups, particularly in relation to
the importance of information being up-to-date, ranked sixth overall by group 1, but second
by group 2. For the second group, all elements are important but the factual accuracy of
information scored full marks from every respondent.
The nature of hypertext means that even the best-written content can only be found easily if
the website structure is effective, as the links – or lack of – may inhibit a browser in their
search for information so it is understandable that a good Web structure was important to
both groups. This demonstrates the ‘newness’ of websites as a means of communication,
and the different approach required from readers: making sense of the structure of a
corporate brochure or report is innate, and all information contained within it can easily be
accessed; in the electronic medium, the structure is raised up to become visible and
intrusive and while poorly written content will not necessarily inhibit our understanding of the
message, a poor structure will do so.
The two items that relate most closely to the written element of a website – ‘Spelling and
grammar are good’ and ‘Writing style makes it easy to read’ – are not top priorities for either
group. This is reflected in comments from participants: many of them are tolerant of minor
errors, but at the same time these have a negative impact on the perceived credibility of an
organisation. This ranking seems low, coming as it does from communications
professionals, as it suggests that they are judgemental about others’ work but do not
consider the impact of their own work’s accuracy.
3.2 Reliance on the medium
The participants are known to have easy access and exposure to organisational websites,
so it is understandable that when it comes to relying on information, their reliance on print is
low (see Figure 2 overleaf).
Two of those who thought that a printed brochure would be more reliable had financial
reasons for doing so: for one, the cost of producing printed materials makes the information
more reliable as the organisation has ‘a vested interest in the information being correct’.
For the other, a strain on resources makes it rare for an organisation to have a dedicated
website editor, making it less reliable than print.

- 39 -
Figure 2: Would you rely on website content from a public sector or non-profit organisation
MORE or LESS than a printed brochure on the same topic?
15%
45%
40%
Rely on the website more
Rely on both to the same extent
Rely on the printed brochure more
Of those who would rely on both equally, one suggested that ‘It is perhaps especially
important for websites to be trustworthy and professional because commonly they are a
consumer’s first contact with an organisation’. One person qualified her response by saying
that she would rely on the Web because of its speed, yet would ‘trust the printed word more
and assume the printed information is more reliable’.
Ease of access and speed of updating were among the reasons of the 45 per cent who said
that they would rely more on the website. The website also has the ability to ‘provide more
detailed information’ as it does not have the same space constraints as a printed brochure,
where length can be dictated by budget. Of this group, interestingly, two ‘hoped’ and three
‘assumed’ that the Web was more reliable, indicating that they perhaps have some doubts
about the medium they said they would rely on more. What these results show is that the
ubiquitous nature of the Internet, and easy access to it in the work environment, makes
websites the preferred port of call for information but while respondents rely on it for
reasons mainly of convenience, they do not believe that it is necessarily to be trusted.
3.3 Impact of errors: print compared to Web
As someone who has worked with communications professionals in several organisations, I
had expected that this group would be fairly judgemental about punctuation, spelling and
grammar errors on a public-sector or non-profit website; after all, many of them are involved
in producing the content that represents their organisation to the public and have a clear
role in shaping and maintaining the reputation of that organisation. The overwhelming
opinion among participants is that punctuation, spelling or grammar errors on a website give
them a negative impression of the organisation. Although some qualified their responses,

- 40 -
all suggested that anything more than minor mistakes affected their view. Seven said that it
would undermine the ‘professionalism’ of the organisation, with two singling out for criticism
the specific staff or department responsible for the quality of the content. Others were more
forgiving of small mistakes, four commenting that a small error or easy-to-make typo was
understandable and one stating that it would have no impact ‘if it does not impede reading
and is minor’. Reflecting on the current trend of website content, one respondent
commented that ‘bad grammar or punctuation is something that perhaps we have come to
expect’. Another, who also considered mistakes to be inevitable, saw the lack of resourcing
for editing services, and the pressure to publish quickly, as the causes for error.
The impact on ‘credibility’ was specifically mentioned by one quarter of respondents, which
is in line with Spyridakis (2000, p. 373). As one participant said: ‘Sometimes it seems that
you see so many [mistakes] that it would be impossible to treat anything you read online
with any credibility’. In contrast, one respondent, who felt that small errors were acceptable,
asked, ‘What is perfect?? “Perfect” varies from person to person depending on their
standards and expectations’. This response underlines that people bring with them to one
website different expectations that have been shaped by other websites and, although they
were not asked directly, it is probable that all or most of them also access websites in their
non-work lives, which may have influenced the way they responded. The way we approach
a book or brochure is shaped by our past experiences and we may only be made aware of
the convention when it is broken (see as an example House of Leaves by Mark Z.
Danielewski, a book that sets out to deliberately break layout conventions). One
respondent explained, ‘A book/brochure etc tells you almost everything about itself simply
by holding it’, whereas Web conventions are still emerging, even for the genre of
corporate websites.
When asked how they would feel if a similar error appeared in a printed version of the
information, 12 respondents indicated that they would feel the same as it if appeared on a
website, one repeating that a mistake would have a negative impact on the credibility of the
information and others commenting again that they would have a ‘poor impression’ of the
organisation or would see it as ‘unprofessional’.
Just one respondent suggested that a mistake on a website is worse, commenting that
there is ‘even less excuse I think for errors on the Web, as website information can be
continually updated, and if someone misses something in the proofing processes it can

- 41 -
always be corrected later’. This sentiment that information can be easily corrected is
echoed in the literature of McAlpine (2001 p. 2) and Gerstner (1998 p. 17).
Comments from six respondents showed a clear difference between the media, with a
mistake in print worse in their opinion than a mistake on a website. Their reasons were
split: three commented that the print process, which includes a ‘formal edit, sub-edit, proof-
reading process’, should involve more rigorous checking, so a mistake in a print publication
that has been seen by ‘more sets of editorial of eyes’ is less acceptable; for the other three,
a mistake in print was seen as worse because it is harder to fix. Again, money was a factor,
with two respondents reasoning that the cost involved in creating a printed document, or
correcting an error in one, makes a mistake worse in print than on a website. This
perception of the Web as the quick and cheaper option seems fairly widespread, and
demonstrates that the participants are generally unaware of the costs associated with
building and maintaining websites.
3.4 The Web publishing process
The editorial process for print content is more rigorous than for the website in the
participants’ organisations. This is not surprising, given the still relative newness of the
medium: organisations that had a place in their structure for a print editor were, with the
advent of their corporate website, forced to cope with an increase in the volume of content
being produced, regardless of whether or not the print editor had the required skills to edit
for the new medium. I wanted to find out what level of involvement the editor has in Web
publishing, so I asked participants to explain the process in their organisation for producing
content. Many of their responses could be broken down into clear stages, and in 13 cases
content is written (or usually written) by the various departments throughout the
organisation. In 12 out of those 13, the communications team has the opportunity for
editorial input before the content is uploaded. In the remaining organisation, the respondent
indicated that there are no resources to deal with editing the content, and it is uploaded
either by the part-time, off-site webmaster or by the Communications Officer. In the
remainder of cases, it was hard to identify a clear publishing process, or the respondent
was not sure of the process.
Encouragingly, two thirds of those who write content do so specifically for their website,
which suggests that they are likely to have the medium in mind when they write and edit,
resulting in more appropriate content for the Web.

- 42 -
Figure 3: If content is given to an editor before being uploaded, what do you see as the role
of the editor?
Element No. responses
Grammar 9
Spelling 8
Clear, plain English 7
An appropriate style for the audience 7
Punctuation 5
3.5 The editor: role, reactions and scope of involvement
Role
The perceived role of the editor in the Web publishing process ranges widely among the
participants but the primary function appears to be the management of all aspects of the
language in the same way as would be the case for print. The elements most commonly
seen as part of the editor’s role can be seen in Figure 3:
Where the electronic environment differs from print is partly in its need to be structured
more appropriately for being read online. Five participants made comments to that effect,
including suggestions that the editor should ‘advise on the best ways to present the
material’. A surprisingly low number of respondents – just three – believe that the role
includes deciding where to upload content on the website, to ensure that the location is, as
one person put it, ‘the most usable for the user, and not what suits the internal person in the
organisation best’. And only one suggested that the editor needs to look at how content
might link with other Web content.
The responses raise an interesting point: in all instances where participants explained their
organisation’s publishing process, the content was uploaded by a member of the
communications team. It seems, then, that the first factors that come to mind as part of the
editor’s duties are the same as they would be for print, demonstrating a lack of
understanding of how the role of the editor is changing, or needs to change, to be effective
in Web publishing. To a certain extent, this is a reflection on the nature of editing when
print was the dominant medium: editors today working on printed documents perform the
tasks that they have always performed, albeit with the benefit of computers and word
processing programs. A new environment has been created but it is possible that some
editors, perhaps those who have a history of working with print that pre-dates the Internet,
continue to approach content for the new medium in the same way as the ‘old’. The result

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