I certainly don't want this topic to veer off into the realm of off topicness, so if it does, someone shoot it down.
That said, I find it a very interesting topic... > For example - if I work in Marketing Communications and am tasked to > write Press Releases, how can I insure that my press release headline, > when truncated down to a link or shortened to appear on a WAP phone > interface will still make sense and communicate effectively? Simply have an additional structural element: - Title - Short title (granted, getting someone in PR to write a short title for a press release is an entirely other discussion... ;o) > Format > matters to writers, it informs the writing process and serves as the > "rules of the road" they must follow in structuring their text and > communication agenda. Is it format or media that matters? When working at the paper, every story was done in a word document. Completely out of context from the final printed paper. This didn't seem to hinder the writing process. I think knowing the media is important. Ie, you write differently for newspapers than for radio...but that is simply different content. If you are writing for radio, you don't necessarily need to know who's doing the voiceover. If you are writing for newspaper, you don't necessarily have to known the column width or type size (though cahracter count might be an issue...) > Even in the newspaper example cited below, journalists have some > foresight into how their end editorial product will appear as in > "Johnson, I need 1,000 words on the trial down at the courthouse and > give me a sidebar on who the players are." Even that minimal amount of > "presentation" information is critical in helping them structure their > copy accordingly. It doesn't really effect structure...just the amount of content needed: A story of a certain length and a related story of a certain length. I agree that the author needs to know a minimum to ideally craft the content for the medium, but beyond that, I think any direct attemt at correlating content with presentation at the authoring point isn't necessary and, at times, can be a detriment. -Darrel -- http://cms-list.org/ more signal, less noise.
