Writing an Essay Online: Writing for the Web
Sunday, January 3rd, 2010With the sweeping increase in the use of Internet by students and professors alike, it has become common is the academia to exchange assignments and essays online. Students are asked to submit their assignments via the university portal or on the professors’ academic blog/website for evaluation. This has revolutionized the traditional teaching methodology taking education from the spheres of classroom to the world wide web.
In this context, it becomes indispensable for students to understand and implement the norms of web writing and utilize it to their advantage. Though the rules of writing remains similar to that in print, yet their are minor changes in the presentation and format, which if used skillfully can make an assignment presentable and reader friendly.
Important factors to keep note of when writing for submitting an essay online.
Write Concisely: Reading from the computer screen is slower than reading from the print source. It is thus important to deliver your points concisely in your essay assignment. This helps you make your writing effective by getting rid of redundant words and long sentences that become complex and ambiguous. To add emphasis to your arguments, look for the use of the exact words instead of using superlatives and increasing the length of the sentence.
Use Neat Classifications: Avoid writing essay assignments in long paragraphs without the use of headings or sub headings. The reader should be able to skim through the text to know the contents and choose which part to focus when reading the essay. To make your essay assignment reader friendly, use neat classifications that divides your essay assignment into meaningful parts. You may use headings, bullets, numbering to highlight the content.
Using the Right Font: When writing an essay assignment for online submission, make sure you read the requirements of the instructor. However, it is recommended to follow the academic format requirements which are also used in higher academic assignments like dissertation or thesis writing. If you do not have the expected requirement list, use 12 point New Times Roman or Arial as your text font and size. Use bold or italics to highlight headings and change the font size for emphasis: 16 point for heading and 14 point for sub heading. Keep the sub-sub heading in the same font size, either using italics or bold for emphasis.
Use Hyperlinks: Hyperlinks allow you to link words in the text to other web page of relevance or importance. This is an essential feature of web writing and can be used productively to establish inter connectivity between essay assignments.
Submission in the Required Format: Make sure you upload your essay online in the extension or the format your are required to. The common text formats are .doc, .rtf, .pdf among others. If your essay assignments has special formatting or diagrams, it is recommended to use the .pdf version to avoid any formatting errors that may occur.
