[Sigia-l] Re: Writing for the Web

[John R. Howe]

John,

By now you're probably feeling bombarded with links... so here are 
the 2 best *books* on Web writing, in my appropriately modest opinion.

"Hot Text: Web Writing That Works." Jonathan and Lisa Price. New Riders, 2002
"Net words: Creating High-Impact Online Copy." Nick Usborne. McGraw-Hill, 2002.

I noticed a link to N. Usborne's  "ClickZ" archives in Laura's 
encyclopedic www.d.umn.edu/goto/webdesign/ list. See also: my "Web 
Writing Checklist" at http://www.cwatercom.com/html/cw_checklist.html 
with many items borrowed from the above 2 books.

Finally - if you haven't already, save yourself and your writers 
*much* time (= money) and prevent debilitating religious wars over 
grammar, punctuation, spelling, etc. with these three style guides: 
"The Associated Press Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law" (Perseus 
Press); "Microsoft Manual of Style for Technical Publications" 
(Microsoft Press) and "The Chicago Manual of Style" (University of 
Chicago Press).

Add to that list, of course,  whatever  *internal* editorial style 
guides Cisco already has.   I'd be interested to know if it does, and 
if so, what stage of development they're in.  In most of my Web 
writing contracts over the past seven years I've had to introduce and 
champion editorial style guides (both external and internal), usually 
because "content" was an afterthought for Web teams focused 
exclusively on technology, graphic design and structural/visual (IA, 
UI) "user experience."  It never ceases to amaze and inspire me that 
even though users spend most of their time *reading* (everything from 
link labels and headlines to news stories and FAQs), use of *words* 
(writing, reading) is almost always missing from discussions of "user 
experience."

- John


-- 
John R. Howe, Web Writer and Information Architect
"What You Read Is What You Get" (WYRIWYG)
Clearwater Communications
http://www.cwatercom.com