Content Writing: The fall of Gutenberg and the drift in priority from meaning to message

Writing as a medium of expression has its origin in the ages when picture of a bird was used to say flying. Website content writing or SEO content writing did not exist then, probably, as there was hardly any suitable object to be used for referring to such types of scribbling. But script came into being and it started to evolve allowing mankind to be precise in speech. When the German blacksmith and goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg raised the printing press in 1440 CE, he soon became a publisher. This single invention transformed his life and continued to inform the readership for about 550 years. But today Gutenberg is dead and even his bones stink. If the rise of Gutenberg has fed on the urgency to trim down a book-long ode into a snappy news post, the rising demand of even snappier content has summoned his fall, mercilessly.

Shift in objectivity

While the Gutenberg era still enamors the conservationists like the last lashes of beer, different touchdowns are there for writers engaged in a web content writing company in India and everywhere at present. As compared to the writers 15^th, 16^th and 17^th centuries who were married to the pages, the new writers are married to the customer and the end users.

This is what David Ogilvy meant when he said in bland terms “The consumer is not a moron, she is your wife”. The now deceased branding guru and founder of advertising firm Ogilvy & Mather proclaimed this married status of a writer when he foresaw the current tumult in web content writing services in India, where writing for the consumer means stripping it off to the bones. But this change in the writing sweeps over everything that guides the progress of language in terms of grammar, linguistic drift and style. The accepted rules of grammar and syntax have been flouted for long breaking and binding the tradition to erect a new edifice. Success of a write-up is judged by how effectively it serves the purpose and not by the satisfaction of the quick scribbler.

Now in the second decade of 21^st century, the page of Gutenberg is nowhere visible and even his contribution is confined to the archives inspires interest and awe to the toddlers.

Change in readership elements

The way today’s audience reads is diametrically opposed to how they used to read in the past. Now the first issue that perturbs the writer of a website content writing or SEO content writing is the necessity to separate form and function and frame content writing from the viewpoint of readers. From a simple news post where the first paragraph is generally a single sentence and sums the substance, to a service page where the writer focuses more in the benefits than on features—in every discipline of web content writing in India and the world, there is a propensity to frame the keynote only leaving the detail