Matthew Stibbe's article is refreshingly ordered and concise. I appreciate how he takes his own advice and breaks topics up with headings, short paragraphs, bullet points, and bolded phrases--in doing so, he proves his argument about the importance of readability. Perhaps because of the specific nature of his topic and expertise, but Stibbe seems to have a stronger grasp of the medium than other writers whose articles we have read about the differences in writing for the web versus writing for print.
I have mixed feelings about the prevalence of links Stibbe provides. On the one hand, I find them pretty distracting. In some cases he uses five in one sentence! I realize that they are intended to be helpful bridges to additional information, but the visual abberations interrupt flow and make the entire document a bit more difficult to read. On the other hand, the secondary pages themselves are fascinating and helpful. The link for The Economist Style Guide conveniently lead me to the Amazon page, so I already ordered it. Way to go, Stibbe, I hope The Economist is compensating you for your advertising!
Stibbe's tips themselves are incredibly helpful as well. He takes fairly obvious concepts (like "It's a business, stupid"and "Learn to market yourself") and elaborates in a real, useful manner. It is fascinating to me how prevalent blogging has become as a viable writing outlet. In addition to the three or four college classes I have taken that require me to blog in order to get used to the medium and get myself published, Stibbe's is the most recent in a handful of articles about writing that I have read urging me to get blogging for practice, but also for the real world.
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