[Sigia-l] Writing for the Web

[Austin Govella]

It's also worth remembering that it's more difficult to read material 
online. It's not rare for people to print pages so they can read them 
on paper. Paper is a higher fidelity medium than our measly 72-96 dpi 
screens.

That said, people tend to browse, scan, and then read, so text should 
be written and presented accordingly. Cooper's suggestion to think of 
your users as being intelligent, but very busy is a good way to think 
about writing on the web.

Use sub heads to break up long stretches of text. I try and use a sub 
head every three paragraphs or so (i.e. a six paragraph page might have 
one or two sub heads). It's not a formula, but your content, at that 
length, will typically break up into a couple of neat sub-sections.

You also want to have shorter paragraphs. As they scan your title and 
subheads, shorter paragraphs let them continue to narrow their scanning 
from the entire page (the title), to a section of the page (the 
sub-head), to specific paragraphs.

Otherwise, a few typographical concerns should drive web writing as 
well. Don't embed a lot of links. Links act like boldface text, 
shouting for attention, and distracting the users eye from scanning. 
The link label needs to stand out and clearly identify where the user 
will be going, but while reading, the user is also looking for the 
context of the link. Don't let your links take too much attention from 
the surrounding (con)text.

For informational websites, shorter, more straightforward writing seems 
to work better. Your marketing positioning will set your tone, but your 
tactical strategy for writing should be driven by who will be reading 
your site and why.

Nielsen: http://www.useit.com/papers/webwriting/
Sun: http://www.sun.com/980713/webwriting/
WDVL: http://wdvl.internet.com/Internet/Writing/
Web Monkey: http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/99/32/index0a.html
Web Style Guide: http://webstyleguide.com/style/index.html

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Austin