Letting Go of the Words - Writing Web Content that Works

Front Cover

Letting Go of the Words: Writing Web Content that Works

Copyright Page

Contents

Foreword

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1. Content! Content! Content!

People come to web sites for the content

Web users skim and scan

Web users read, but

They don't read more because

What makes writing for the web work well?

Introducing Letting Go of the Words

Chapter 2. People! People! People!

We all interpret as we read

Successful writers focus on their audiences

Seven steps to understanding your audiences

1. List your major audiences

2. Gather information about your audiences

3. List major characteristics for each audience

4. Gather your audiences' questions, tasks, and stories

5. Use your information to create personas

6. Include the persona's goals and tasks

7. Use your information to write scenarios for your site

Chapter 3. Starting Well: Home Pages

Home pages – the 10-minute mini-tour

Identifying the site, establishing the brand

Setting the tone and personality of the site

Helping people get a sense of what the site is all about

Letting people start key tasks immediately

Sending each person on the right way, effectively and efficiently

Putting it all together: A case study

Building your site up from the content – not only down from the home page

Chapter 4. Getting There: Pathway Pages

Most site visitors are on a hunt – a mission – and the pathway is just to get them there

People don't want to read a lot while hunting

A pathway page is like a table of contents

Sometimes, short descriptions help

Marketing is likely to be ignored on a pathway page 61 The smoothness of the path is more important than the number of clicks (within reason)

Marketing is likely to be ignored on a pathway page

The smoothness of the path is more important than the number of clicks (within reason)

Many people choose the first option that looks plausible

Many site visitors are landing inside your site

Chapter 5. Writing Information, Not Documents

Breaking up large documents

Deciding how much to put on one web page

PDF – yes or no?

Chapter 6. Focusing on Your Essential Messages

Six guidelines for focusing on your essential messages

1. Give people only what they need

2. Cut! Cut! Cut! And cut again!

3. Start with the key point. Write in inverted pyramid style

4. Break down walls of words

5. Market by giving useful information

6. Layer information to help web users

Chapter 7. Designing Your Web Pages for Easy Use

Fourteen guidelines for helpful design

1. Make the page elements obvious, using patterns and alignment

2. Consider the entire site when planning the design

3. Work with templates

4. Use space effectively. Keep active space in your content

5. Beware of false bottoms

6. Don't let headings float

7. Don't center text

8. Set a sans serif font as the default

9. Think broadly about users and their situations when setting type size

10. Use a fluid layout with a medium line length as default

11. Don't write in all capitals

12. Don't underline anything but links. Use italics sparingly

13. Provide good contrast between text and background

14. Think about all your site visitors when you choose colors

Interlude: The New Life of Press Releases

The old – and ongoing – life of a press release

What has changed?

How do people use press releases on the web?

What should we do?

Does it make a difference?

What would the difference look like?

Chapter 8. Tuning Up Your Sentences

Ten guidelines for tuning up your sentences

1. Talk to your site visitors. Use "you"

2. Show that you are a person and that your organization includes people

3. Write in the active voice (most of the time)

4. Write simple, short, straightforward sentences

5. Cut unnecessary words

6. Give extra information its own place

7. Keep paragraphs short

8. Start with the context – first things first, second things second

9. Put the action in the verbs, not the nouns

10. Use your web users' words

Putting it all together

Chapter 9. Using Lists and Tables

Nine guidelines for writing useful web lists

Six guidelines for creating useful web tables

1. Use lists to make information easy to grab

2. Keep most lists short

3. Format lists to make them work well

4. Match bullets to your site's personality

5. Use numbered lists for instructions

6. Turn paragraphs into steps

7. Give even complex instructions as steps

8. Keep the sentence structure in lists parallel

9. Don't number list items if they are not steps and people might confuse them with steps

10. Use tables when you have numbers to compare

11. Use tables for a series of "if, then" sentences

12. Think about tables as answers to questions

13. Think carefully about what to put in the left column of a table

14. Keep tables simple

15. Format tables on the web so that people focus on the information and not on the lines

Chapter 10. Breaking Up Your Text with Headings

Good headings help readers in many ways

Thinking about headings also helps writers

Don't just slap headings into old content

Twelve guidelines for writing useful headings

1. Start by outlining your content with headings

2. Ask questions as headings when people come with questions

3. Give statement headings to convey key messages

4. Use action phrase headings for instructions

5. Use noun and noun phrase headings sparingly

6. Put your site visitors' words in the headings

7. Exploit the power of parallelism

8. Don't dive deep; keep to no more than two levels of headings (below the page title)

9. Make the heading levels obvious

10. Distinguish headings from text with type size and bold or color

11. Help people jump to the topic they need with same-page links

12. Evaluate! Read the headings to see what you have done

Interlude: Legal Information Can Be Understandable, Too

Make the information legible

Make sure your legal information prints well

Use site visitors' words in your headings

Avoid technical language

Avoid archaic legal language

Apply all the clear writing techniques to your legal information

Chapter 11. Using Illustrations Effectively

Illustrations serve different purposes

Nine general guidelines for using illustrations effectively

1. Don't make people wonder what or why

2. Choose an appropriate size

3. Use illustrations to support, not hide, content

4. In pictures of people, show diversity

5. Don't make content look like ads

6. Don't annoy people with blinking, rolling, waving, or wandering text or pictures

7. Use animation where it helps – not just for show

8. Don't make people wait through splash or Flash

9. Make illustrations accessible

Chapter 12. Writing Meaningful Links

Twelve guidelines for writing meaningful links

1. Don't make new program and product names into links by themselves

2. Rethink document titles and headings that turn into links

3. Think ahead. Match links and page titles

4. Be as explicit as you can in the space you have – and make more space if you need it

5. Use action phrases for action links

6. Use single nouns sparingly; longer, more descriptive links often work better

7. Add a short description if people need it – or rewrite the link

8. Make the link meaningful – not Click here, not just More

9. Coordinate when you have multiple, similar links

10. Don't embed links if you want people to stay with your information

11. If you use bullets with links, make them active, too

12. Make both unvisited and visited links obvious

Chapter 13. Getting from Draft to Final Web Pages

Think of writing as revising drafts

Review and edit your own work

Ask colleagues and others to read and comment

Put your ego in the drawer – cheerfully

Work with a writing specialist or editor

Make reviews work for you and your web site visitors

Interlude: Creating an Organic Style Guide

Use a style guide to keep the site consistent

Don't reinvent

Appoint an owner

Make it easy to create, to find, and to use

Bibliography

Subject Index

Index of Web Sites Shown as Examples