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In the world of scholarly publishing, a growing chorus argues that print is for stripped-down versions of articles, supplemented by longer bells-and-whistles versions online, where space and cost are not constraints.

For example, Stevan Harnad, a British professor whose professional life is dedicated to a quixotic quest to have authors deposit copies of their manuscripts in openly accessible online repositories, argues "for authors to self-archive not only the shortened published version, but, prominently hyperlinked, the original full version too (and any revisions, corrections and updates)."

To an extent, the argument makes sense. Many articles, not only in scholarly publishing, could be enhanced by supplementary reference material, and the Web may be the perfect place to store it economically.

Still, I give pause at the prospect of print version articles supplemented by one or more lengthy "director's cut" versions in repositories. A strict word limit, like the prospect of hanging, tends to concentrate the mind wonderfully. Though the deposited version might contain useful supplementary data, it might also be simply represent the self-indulgence of a gassy author.

After all, Watson and Crick's 1953 paper in the journal Nature showing the double helix structure of DNA runs barely more than a page. A paper that modestly suggested "a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material” needed no supplementary detritus to change the world's understanding of genetics.

Perhaps what enabled Watson and Crick to think and to write with such clarity and vigor was the need to be concise. As William Strunk said, "A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts."

We should guard against cluttering the Web with unnecessary parts simply because it is easy to do so.

Search engine optimization has become has become a necessary component of marketing Web sites and online publications. With Google being the major way many readers find information, it's important that articles appear at the top of search results, even if that means paying for a sponsored link to get them there.

But now optimizing placement on Google may have moved from marketing to editorial itself. Whereas journalists were once trained to give the reader five Ws in the lead, now they may find pressure to deliver news morsels that Google will find tasty.

As the Wall Street Journal reports, the Times of London “is training journalists to write in a way that makes their articles more likely to appear among Google’s unpaid search results.” Zach Leonard, the paper's digital-media publisher, is quoted as saying, "You make sure key phrases and topic words are embedded in the top paragraph and headlines."

The strategy makes business sense. Newspaper readership is falling worldwide, and Google can be the tool for making content visible to untapped new markets--like U.S. readers for British newspapers. The Wall Street Journal articles quotes Edward Roussel, digital editor of The Telegraph, as saying, ”The most important driver of all readers [to our site] is Google, except for people who know us and come directly. It plays a critical part of exporting our brand, particularly to the U.S.”

It is not only newspaper reporters who are learning to talk to Google. Blogger John Gruber, who hosts Daring Fireball, a blog dedicated to "Mac + Web Nerdery, Etc.,"described adding a Google-grabbing ending to a post about fixing a common glitch in the energy saver setting of Mac's OS X operating system. This was the ending: "Yes, yes — I’ll file a proper report with Apple about this. But first things first — blog it so it gets into Google, the world’s best troubleshooting database."

Today, more than two years after Gruber's post, it remains the top hit to Google queries about problems with loading the OS X energy saver.

Gruber summed up his strategy for writing for Google with these tips:

"Don’t get cute with the title. Google seems to place an awful lot of emphasis on what you put in the title tag in your HTML headers. Ideally, the title should contain the words you think people will use in their queries.

"Stick to the facts in the first few paragraphs in the article. I’m somewhat sure that Google doesn’t index entire documents, just the first X words or paragraphs. And even if they do index entire documents, it seems to me they place more importance on the first first paragraphs. The specifics of Google’s indexer aren’t worth worrying about; the point is, get to the point quickly."

"If there are any likely search terms that you couldn't squeeze into the title, try to use them in the opening few paragraphs."

In the end, the advice isn't much different from getting the five Ws up high in your story. Maybe talking to the machine and talking to the man aren't so different after all.

Labels: Google writing newspapers search engine