Being Mr. Kenny

Writing for the web is generally more successful when it’s informal, that’s why blogs are so popular. Formal writing tends to bore users unless it’s about something of interest. For instance, how many people actually read documents entitled “Terms and Conditions” without falling asleep half-way through?

But an informal style doesn’t mean you get to be lazy about basic things like capital letters and punctuation. While I can just about bear to read something written entirely in lower case, I find it infuriating when people have used just one line break for a new paragraph (i.e. they’ve only pushed the return key once, instead of twice).

It makes text difficult to read, it makes it look ugly, and it decreases the chance that what you’ve written will be read (or if it is read, it won’t be so easily understood). It also makes you look stupid.