When I started writing for an online audience, I soon learned one big rule – that writing for the internet is completely different to any other kind of writing.

As a former journalist working for newspapers, this was something that took some time getting used to. My former newspaper style wasn’t going to cut it with my online audience so I had no choice but to re-invent my whole style of writing.

Over the years as the editor of MakeUseOf.com, I have learnt the following :

- The attention span of an online audience is extremely short. Therefore you need to get to the point rather quickly, preferably within the first two paragraphs. If you don’t show people what the point of your article is by then, then you can forget it. They will already have moved onto other websites.

- Audiences like bullet lists! Instead of piling one big heap of text onto the page, split it up into nice short bulleted lists (like this one). Those short attention spans will love you for it as it allows readers to digest huge chunks of information quickly.

- Grammar bloopers & spelling mistakes will hurt your reputation! – you might not think it’s a big deal if you misplace an apostrophe or say “peice” instead of “piece”. But trust me, your audience will think it’s a big deal and they won’t hesitate to unleash their grammar police upon you in the comments. It doesn’t help your reputation either as you will come across as slapdash and careless. Buy a good style guide and refer to it often. Yahoo has a good one - http://styleguide.yahoo.com .

- Readers love articles with good pictures – the old adage of “a picture paints a thousand words” is especially true on the internet. A page full of text is not enticing to that short attention span. On the other hand, text with some interesting, attention-grabbing photos will make them want to stay on the page a few minutes longer. Remember to credit all photos to their proper owners.

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Mark O’Neill is a freelance writer of 20 years experience, and also the managing editor of MakeUseOf.com, since August 2007. You can see his personal website at markoneill.org Mark has 21 post(s) at Free Writing Center