Letting Go of the Words (eBook)

Front Cover 1
Letting Go of the Words: Writing Web Content that Works 4
Copyright Page 5
Contents 8
Foreword 16
Acknowledgments 18
Chapter 1. Content! Content! Content! 20
People come to web sites for the content 20
Web users skim and scan 21
Web users read, but 21
They don't read more because 22
What makes writing for the web work well? 23
Introducing Letting Go of the Words 25
Chapter 2. People! People! People! 30
We all interpret as we read 30
Successful writers focus on their audiences 31
Seven steps to understanding your audiences 31
1. List your major audiences 31
2. Gather information about your audiences 32
3. List major characteristics for each audience 33
4. Gather your audiences' questions, tasks, and stories 38
5. Use your information to create personas 38
6. Include the persona's goals and tasks 43
7. Use your information to write scenarios for your site 43
Chapter 3. Starting Well: Home Pages 48
Home pages – the 10-minute mini-tour 49
Identifying the site, establishing the brand 50
Setting the tone and personality of the site 50
Helping people get a sense of what the site is all about 54
Letting people start key tasks immediately 60
Sending each person on the right way, effectively and efficiently 63
Putting it all together: A case study 65
Building your site up from the content – not only down from the home page 69
Chapter 4. Getting There: Pathway Pages 72
Most site visitors are on a hunt – a mission – and the pathway is just to get them there 73
People don't want to read a lot while hunting 73
A pathway page is like a table of contents 77
Sometimes, short descriptions help 78
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) 80
Marketing is likely to be ignored on a pathway page 80
The smoothness of the path is more important than the number of clicks (within reason) 82
Many people choose the first option that looks plausible 85
Many site visitors are landing inside your site 85
Chapter 5. Writing Information, Not Documents 88
Breaking up large documents 88
Deciding how much to put on one web page 99
PDF – yes or no? 104
Chapter 6. Focusing on Your Essential Messages 112
Six guidelines for focusing on your essential messages 113
1. Give people only what they need 113
2. Cut! Cut! Cut! And cut again! 117
3. Start with the key point. Write in inverted pyramid style 121
4. Break down walls of words 126
5. Market by giving useful information 129
6. Layer information to help web users 133
Chapter 7. Designing Your Web Pages for Easy Use 146
Fourteen guidelines for helpful design 147
1. Make the page elements obvious, using patterns and alignment 148
2. Consider the entire site when planning the design 150
3. Work with templates 156
4. Use space effectively. Keep active space in your content 156
5. Beware of false bottoms 159
6. Don't let headings float 160
7. Don't center text 162
8. Set a sans serif font as the default 163
9. Think broadly about users and their situations when setting type size 165
10. Use a fluid layout with a medium line length as default 168
11. Don't write in all capitals 169
12. Don't underline anything but links. Use italics sparingly 170
13. Provide good contrast between text and background 171
14. Think about all your site visitors when you choose colors 174
Interlude: The New Life of Press Releases 182
The old – and ongoing – life of a press release 182
What has changed? 182
How do people use press releases on the web? 183
What should we do? 185
Does it make a difference? 185
What would the difference look like? 187
Chapter 8. Tuning Up Your Sentences 190
Ten guidelines for tuning up your sentences 191
1. Talk to your site visitors. Use "you" 191
2. Show that you are a person and that your organization includes people 196
3. Write in the active voice (most of the time) 200
4. Write simple, short, straightforward sentences 204
5. Cut unnecessary words 206
6. Give extra information its own place 207
7. Keep paragraphs short 210
8. Start with the context – first things first, second things second 211
9. Put the action in the verbs, not the nouns 213
10. Use your web users' words 214
Putting it all together 218
Chapter 9. Using Lists and Tables 224
Nine guidelines for writing useful web lists 224
Six guidelines for creating useful web tables 225
1. Use lists to make information easy to grab 225
2. Keep most lists short 226
3. Format lists to make them work well 228
4. Match bullets to your site's personality 231
5. Use numbered lists for instructions 235
6. Turn paragraphs into steps 237
7. Give even complex instructions as steps 241
8. Keep the sentence structure in lists parallel 242
9. Don't number list items if they are not steps and people might confuse them with steps 243
10. Use tables when you have numbers to compare 245
11. Use tables for a series of "if, then" sentences 246
12. Think about tables as answers to questions 247
13. Think carefully about what to put in the left column of a table 248
14. Keep tables simple 249
15. Format tables on the web so that people focus on the information and not on the lines 250
Chapter 10. Breaking Up Your Text with Headings 254
Good headings help readers in many ways 254
Thinking about headings also helps writers 255
Don't just slap headings into old content 257
Twelve guidelines for writing useful headings 257
1. Start by outlining your content with headings 258
2. Ask questions as headings when people come with questions 259
3. Give statement headings to convey key messages 266
4. Use action phrase headings for instructions 268
5. Use noun and noun phrase headings sparingly 269
6. Put your site visitors' words in the headings 274
7. Exploit the power of parallelism 274
8. Don't dive deep keep to no more than two levels of headings (below the page title)
9. Make the heading levels obvious 276
10. Distinguish headings from text with type size and bold or color 276
11. Help people jump to the topic they need with same-page links 277
12. Evaluate! Read the headings to see what you have done 279
Interlude: Legal Information Can Be Understandable, Too 282
Make the information legible 282
Make sure your legal information prints well 283
Use site visitors' words in your headings 283
Avoid technical language 284
Avoid archaic legal language 285
Apply all the clear writing techniques to your legal information 287
Chapter 11. Using Illustrations Effectively 292
Illustrations serve different purposes 292
Nine general guidelines for using illustrations effectively 309
1. Don't make people wonder what or why 309
2. Choose an appropriate size 310
3. Use illustrations to support, not hide, content 311
4. In pictures of people, show diversity 313
5. Don't make content look like ads 315
6. Don't annoy people with blinking, rolling, waving, or wandering text or pictures 315
7. Use animation where it helps – not just for show 318
8. Don't make people wait through splash or Flash 319
9. Make illustrations accessible 323
Chapter 12. Writing Meaningful Links 326
Twelve guidelines for writing meaningful links 327
1. Don't make new program and product names into links by themselves 327
2. Rethink document titles and headings that turn into links 329
3. Think ahead. Match links and page titles 331
4. Be as explicit as you can in the space you have – and make more space if you need it 333
5. Use action phrases for action links 334
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 336
8. Make the link meaningful – not Click here, not just More 337
9. Coordinate when you have multiple, similar links 341
10. Don't embed links if you want people to stay with your information 342
11. If you use bullets with links, make them active, too 345
12. Make both unvisited and visited links obvious 345
Chapter 13. Getting from Draft to Final Web Pages 348
Think of writing as revising drafts 349
Review and edit your own work 349
Ask colleagues and others to read and comment 354
Put your ego in the drawer – cheerfully 356
Work with a writing specialist or editor 357
Make reviews work for you and your web site visitors 358
Interlude: Creating an Organic Style Guide 364
Use a style guide to keep the site consistent 364
Don't reinvent 366
Appoint an owner 367
Make it easy to create, to find, and to use 367
Bibliography 368
Subject Index 372
Index of Web Sites Shown as Examples 382