Recall that originally libel was for writing and slander for spoken forms of defamation. Over time libel has absorbed almost any form of non-spoken defamation, including anything broadcast and anything recorded in permanent form.

Why does this matter? Libel has a historical origin as a part of the criminal process and a means by which the state could prevent scurrilous printed material. As a result libel is one of the very small number of causes of action where there was no need to prove damage of any kind.

Slander, on the other hand, has a different background. In most cases for there to be a valid claim for slander, actual damage would have to be proved. There were some exceptions to this for particularly serious slanders, such as a a statement that a woman was unchaste.^[24]

Although it may feel like a slander, everything written on the web will be treated as a libel. Thus whether or not there was damage is immaterial.

Since the Defamation Act 2013 has imposed a requirement of “serious harm”^[25] it seems to me that this distinction is likely to be very obscure. Claims for slander are fairly rare. The fact that a defamatory statement was slander rather than libel would matter only where there had as yet been no damage to the claimant’s reputation but where serious harm was likely to be caused.