This is a post from 15 years ago on my main website. It was written in the golden age of online journalism when there was still plenty of money for freelances, but the point about writing tighter copy applies just as much today.

Print publishers paid freelance writers by the word. They needed to fill space around lucrative ads and draw readers in with informative or entertaining copy. There was a ready market for bulk, readable copy.

Freelance writers responded to market forces.

They learned to write long. Some padded their prose with waffle. Most didn’t feel pressure to write tight copy. A longer sentence bought a cup of coffee; a couple of extra paragraphs could fund a night in the pub.

Online publishing follows a different economic model. Web readers don’t hang around. As usability expert Jakob Nielsen says: “If you want many readers, focus on short and scannable content.”

Online publishers want snappy copy over and over to maximise page reads and advertising clicks.

Which means freelance writers have to unlearn bad habits and get back to writing tight copy. For us older journalists this means going back to our roots.

Those of us who learnt our trade in the 1970s grew up in a world where newspapers and magazines didn’t have acres of space to fill. And well-staffed newsrooms meant every available column inch was fought over.