Clarity, I said, lies in the eye of the beholder. It's the reader, not the writer, who determines whether the writing is clear. Soon after the article went live, I received an email from Rob Young, a copywriter in Australia. If you are focused on your readers, then I believe you adapt the way you write to communicate clearly to them, regardless of the medium. But what I believe makes clarity even more important online is that readers tend to have a lower tolerance for ambiguity online than offline.
Ambiguity makes life harder.
It causes hesitation, doubt, and frustration. It slows down the read. And making life easier for readers is what the web is all about. Ambiguity forces readers to determine the meaning based on insufficient evidence. Important Clarity is more than an absence of ambiguity.