Remarks on Text Typology (Part 1): It’s All about Being Effective in Advertising
2007-11-03 13:02 | 08. Writing for the Web , 05. E-Commerce
We have learned that writing Web texts must be based on the needs of the medium and the readers that are addressed. This is what modern text linguistics demands, as well as what usability research insists. From the previous posting we know how Web texts generally should look like in order to meet these requirements; the keys to effective communication through Web texts have been defined as succinctness, ‘scannability’, and coherence of hypertext nodes. Before I will explain how to meet these criteria when writing Web texts, I will make short statements on both text typology and style on behalf of a complete linguistic discussion of text production issues, starting with a short series of three postings about text typology.
In E-Commerce, Web Texts Serve Advertisement Purposes
With an earlier posting I have explained that it is essential to communicate efficiently when wanting to sell something on the Web. We have also learned that written language serves nicely in order to provide a direct and non-technical access to the user, who is familiar with language communication, and who may rely on the information that is given in text form rather than trusting overpowering animations.
But in e-commerce, Web texts do not just contain product details or terms and conditions, they also manage the communication with the user and they – of course – aim at winning customers. A more general term for these ambitions would simply be ‘advertising’ (see Dyer 1982). Consequently, the texts that we want to produce shall not only convey certain facts, they shall also carry a bit of emphasis in their message – essential for any consumer promoting intent.
The field of discourse may also gain in complexity since public relations (PR) also represent advertisements. Dyer (1982, p 11) explains: “Whereas advertising is primarily about selling goods, general publicity […] has developed into a business for the selling of persons and companies. PR uses many of the same techniques as advertising; the main difference being that advertisements are booked and paid for, whereas PR relies on arranged incidents, spontaneous happenings, product or company anniversaries being reported by the media as ordinary news.” See also 
Lackerbauer (2003).
Linguistic considerations in order to construct guidelines for writing such Web texts suitable for ads or PR may be expected to arise from text typology. On may be in favour of writing advertising texts for the Web the same way as one would for print, using typological analogies from offline media texts.
But is there something like a typical advertisement or PR text on the Web? Is there such a text type at all?
Read more in the next posting.
Published by Christian Kuhn
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