Let’s look at the Web …

What does anyone mean when he says something about “the Web?” Well, people use the term loosely to mean the Internet, the World Wide Web, or a local intranet and the information that can be obtained from any of these. Although we use them interchangeably, these are not the same thing. Wikipedia defines them as:

Internet—the publicly accessible worldwide system of interconnected computer networks that transmit data by packet switching using a standardized Internet Protocol (IP) and many other protocols.
Intranet—a private network that uses internet protocols, network connectivity, and possibly the public telecommunication system to securely share part of an organization's information or operations with its employees.
World Wide Web—an information space in which the items of interest, referred to as resources, are identified by global identifiers called Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs). The term is often mistakenly used as a synonym for the Internet, but the Web is actually a service that operates over the Internet.

The Web is about Structured Information

All text on a Web page—whether that page is on the Internet, an intranet, or the World Wide Web—has to be organized, or tagged, before it can be seen. You know about Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and you've heard of Extensible Markup Language (XML); you may know that these are subsets of the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) which is a descendant of IBM's original General Markup Language (GML). You've heard or know personally about Java and Javascript and JavaBeans, Flash, PHP, CGI and a dozen other 3- and 4-letter abbreviations that make up the alphabet soup we use to describe the content of a Web page. Only, we're not describing the content with these, but the technical infrastructure, or framing, and controls used to display and manipulate information.

The point is, that we're dealing with a structured environment with any Web page. Whimsy doesn't work very well. The tags used by SGML, HTML, XHTML, and XML are used so that you can find and read data. Without them, the information someone types for a Web page is just lost in the telecommunications ether, or the big bit-bucket in the sky. It's there, but it can't be found and used.

So, you hire Web developers, or programmers, to construct the infrastructure to ensure that your Web site—internal or public—can be used with the functions you need it to offer.

Your Web Content must be Structured, too

Every piece of information published and transmitted, from speech to letters to e-mail to Web pages, is structured. If you don't organize the information you transmit so that it conveys the message you intend, it won't be understood. That data will be lost in the communications ether, tossed into the bit bucket that is miscommunication. Battles and wars are lost through miscommunication, and so are sales.

Web developers build the structure of your site. Professional technical communicators are skilled at organizing and writing your content to be used in the structure the programmers develop.

This is more than grammar; it's about the design of information—achieving the best flow to guide consumers of your data from one point to another in a way they understand and that meets your business needs. Good technical communicators know and use best practices of information architecture and usability. Companies who are populated with technical communicators, such as ours, help you achieve the best return on your Web investment.