Writing online

Many students have experience of writing online, on social networking sites like Facebook, blogs and microblogging sites like Twitter, discussion boards, or other types of forum. There are probably three general points to consider before moving on to the individual skills detailed in this section.

The great advantage of online writing is being able to link to other online information, whether that’s websites, videos, downloadable files, or other forms of data.
It can be a more public form of writing because, depending on where it is, you might have more or less idea about who the audience is. This will, of course, affect what and how you write.
Finally, there might be an emphasis on writing concisely; for example, it’s often suggested that blog posts should stick to a maximum of 500 words.

Writing online indicates a wide range of forms of writing but because this resource is about academic skills, we’ll concentrate on three that are more commonly used in an educational context: Online Discussion Fora, websites, and blogs. Where would you like to start?