Just as the internet itself is too big and various to define in any way beyond the sketchiest outline, writing for it is likewise too diffuse to nail down entirely. What you do and how you do it will depend entirely on the context you work in—as a hobbyist, a professional, or a freelancer, as a marketer, journalist, or technical writer.

Being able to look under the hood and diagnose a problem, to solve a simple layout issues yourself, to communicate with the real designers and coders if necessary, and to ensure your copy is accessible° are all very useful skills.

If you want to write for any professional media outlet—as a freelancer or staff writer—it'll help to know something about journalistic writing and ethics.

Much of the writing contained on sites like these could be considered marketing copy of one type or another—the sites serve as advertisements. Some of this is contained on static pages and may include mission statements, biographies of founders and employees, testimonials of satisfied customers, and examples of past successes.

Fast-forward to today (I'm writing in 2020) and things are changing again. Thanks in part to the success of subscription-based media companies like Netflix and Hulu, and due to some outlets’ success in creating highly desirable online content, some media outlets like the New York Times, Slate, and the Atlantic are seeing rising numbers of paid subscriptions, and revenue from online ads is higher than ever. The industry is still very fragile, but new business models are carving out a path.

With the rise of devices and social media, more and more readers began to consume more and more content online, and the print subscription revenue for many newspapers and magazines all but dried up, which had the added effect of driving down revenue from selling ads—advertisers don’t pay as much for space when no one is reading. At the same time, Google and Facebook cornered the market on online advertising, which prevented media outlets from fully supplementing their income with online ads. And because online content had always been free, outlets who put their content behind a paywall found that no one was willing to purchase a subscription.

There were other changes happening to the web that made things more dynamic. JavaScript, PHP, and other technology began to allow actual programming to happen in and around webpages, so they no longer had to be just static text but could accept inputs from the viewer and could change what they displayed based on factors surrounding the user and his or her location.

The solution came in the form of CSS, or Cascading Style Sheets, which allow designers to separate the formatting of a webpage from its structure.

The web at this time was built on HTML, or Hypertext Markup Language. To get your writing on the web, you either had to learn how to use HTML or hire someone who did. This mean that the acts of writing and designing for the web were often one and the same.

And the cost of hosting a website is pennies a day, or nothing at all if you just use social media or one of the hundreds of free website creation services. Except it doesn't cost nothing.

When we send our text out in digital formats, a lot of that power is now in the hands of the audience. They choose the device used to access the text—laptop, tablet, or phone, for example—and they can resize and restyle the text to best fit their needs.° They can choose to have Alexa read the words aloud to them while they bake cookies, and they can play that podcast at quadruple speed while they shower.

A web designer can change a single letter on a single page, and someone viewing the page thousands of miles away can hit “refresh” on their browser and have the change instantly before them.