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