Working on the Web edition of the Times has made me realize how limiting a newspaper can be sometimes in presenting the news.

There are limits to what you can do online, of course. But for the most part the Web is free of space restrictions that the newspaper presents. Quite often in newspaper design, how something looks or fits plays almost as much of a role in where and when it is placed in the paper as anything else. In the newspaper, there's only so much room on a page, so stories often jump to another page. Industry surveys consistently tell us readers dislike jumps, but the alternative is to write really short stories, which works against the advantage of depth that newspapers can provide and others can't.

Newspapers also can be very restrictive in how headlines are written. Particularly on stories that only span one column of newsprint, headlines must be very short and contain short words. The size of a headline also impacts how much can be said. The art of headline writing isn't just about coming up with the right words, it also includes coming up with the right words that fit.

Online, there are few restrictions to how short or long a headline can be. Which means that sometimes we rewrite headlines for the Web. So stories may have a slightly different headline online than you'll see in your newspaper.