The web is a strange animal, and in its 15 years has undergone such evolutionary changes as would make a zoologist tear his hair out. (I have never met a bald female zoologist so I assume that they don’t tear their hair out.)

From a forum for particle physicists to discuss the esoteric properties of vector bosons, it is now a place for anyone and everyone to discuss anything and everything.

I read recently that there are 40,000 new blogs starting up every day. The web has democratised the publishing world.

But what sort of language should you use on the web? Writing styles are obviously varied and reflect the personality of the author, and the nature of the site. As they should. But one thing that I have noticed is the prevalence of, what I would call, bad language, in an increasing number of blogs. I’m sure that the writers don’t consider it to be bad language, rather the vernacular appropriate to their culture, and perhaps to the audience of the site.

But the web is not like the spoken word. It is, perhaps, a more informal medium than the printed word. But it cannot be likened to a television or radio program, or even a movie. What is put on the web generally stays there. And even if you remove a page it can have been cached or copied who knows how many times.

Perhaps the nature of the site means that it doesn’t matter. But these things can come back to haunt you, and an author of careless words may find themself at a later time not being taken as seriously as they would like, or have inferences drawn from the language which they have used at an earlier time.

Offensive language gains you no visitors but it may put others off.
Eric Meyer, a CSS expert, and all round guru of web related matters has timely advice at a web site for discussing CSS.

If you wouldn’t say it out loud in front of your grandmother while in a place of worship, then you probably shouldn’t say it on the list either.

Sound advice for any site, in my opinion.