The Spirit of Paulo Freire in Blogland: Struggling for a Knowledge-Log Revolution

Weblogs and knowledge-logs, or 'blogs' and 'klogs,' have emerged into the post-dot.com bubble online world as a notable (and often non-commercial) social phenomenon. While some hear echoes of Web homepage voices from the mid-1990s, the blogging phenomenon during the Iraq war may have taken Web cybercultures in new directions.

Boese, Christine. Into the Blogosphere (2004). Articles>Web Design>Writing>Blogging

A Spoken Genre Gets Written: Online Football Commentaries in English, French, and Spanish    

Many recent studies on computer-mediated communication (CMC) have addressed the question of orality and literacy. This article examines a relatively recent subgenre of CMC, that of written online sports commentary, that provides us with written CMC that is clearly based on firmly established oral genres, those of radio and television sports commentary. The examples analyzed are from two English, two French, and two Spanish online football (soccer) commentaries. The purpose of the study is to examine oral traits and genre mixing in online football commentaries in the three languages and carryover from the spoken genres of radio and television commentaries to this developing genre, following Ferguson. Special attention is paid to Web page design. The study reveals that form and content of online football commentaries are strongly affected by the style of the online newspaper.

Pérez-Sabater, Carmen, Gemma Peña-Martínez, Ed Turney and Begoña Montero-Fleta. Written Communication (2008). Articles>Web Design>Writing>Online

Standards for Online Content Authors

The standards on this page include non-technical standards relevant to all web authors and technical standards relevant to some web authors.

McAlpine, Rachel. Quality Web Content (2005). Articles>Web Design>Style Guides>Writing

Stop Creating ROT (Redundant, Outdated and Trivial Content)

Redundant, outdated and trivial content (ROT): you're soaking in it. First and second generation web sites and intranets are full of ROT. It's almost inevitable when you have a web site but no system for reviewing content regularly.

McAlpine, Rachel. Quality Web Content (2005). Articles>Web Design>Writing

Strategies for Condensing Online Text  

Online writing experts recommend that writers and editors write less text when composing for the screen. To do so effectively, writers need specific strategies for condensing text that go beyond the usual advice for clear, concise writing. In addition, they should be cautious when advised to arbitrarily cut the word count in half, as some experts suggest. This paper offers strategies for condensing online text that result in fewer words overall. It also suggests strategies for making online text seem shorter, even if the word count remains unchanged. This paper concludes by discussing the risks of condensing text too rigorously. Providing complete information with nothing extraneous requires knowing not only what readers need, but what they do not need.

Troffer, Alysson M. STC Proceedings (2001). Articles>Writing>Web Design

Tagline Blues: What's the Site About?

A website's tagline must explain what the company does and what makes it unique among competitors. Two questions can help you assess your own tagline: Would it work just as well for competitors? Would any company ever claim the opposite?

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2001). Articles>Web Design>Writing

Teaching Web Design in the Technical Writing Service Course: Steps Toward a Planned Evolution  

This study uses an online survey of technical communication educators to examine trends in the technical writing service course with regard to web design. Participants for the study were representatives of programs in technical communication in four-year institutions of higher education throughout the United States. The study contributes to research into the function of the technical writing service course in the current technological climate. Identifying trends is one component in an evaluation that will aid effective evolution of this significant course.

Brewer, Pam Estes. STC Proceedings (2004). Articles>Education>Web Design>Technical Writing

Three Reasons to Add Articles to your Web Site

Even if you're selling furniture or herbal supplements, the addition of a large number of articles to your site offers several benefits.

Usborne, Nick. Excess Voice (2007). Articles>Web Design>Writing

Three Reasons Why Content is Still King

Back in the late nineties, the phrase ‘Content is King’ was repeated and repeated and repeated by site owners and marketers alike. The belief was that the more content you had, the greater the number of visitors you would attract. Of course, the content had to be well written, relevant and easy to find. Many sites built very successful businesses as a result.

Usborne, Nick. Excess Voice (2004). Articles>Web Design>Writing

Top Seven Tips to Writing an Effective Blog

If ever there were a perfect tool for the corporate communication expert, blogging is it. Think of a blog as the 3D version of your capabilities, one in which you provide context and meaning to your work experience and expertise. So let's talk about how to blog well.

Weil, Debbie. Communication World Bulletin (2005). Articles>Web Design>Writing>Blogging

Two Different Approaches to Writing Web Pages

It took me a while to realize this about my own approach to web page writing, but I have two different ways of writing.

Usborne, Nick. Excess Voice (2007). Articles>Web Design>Writing

Use Old Words When Writing for Findability

Familiar words spring to mind when users create their search queries. If your writing favors made-up terms over legacy words, users won't find your site.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2006). Articles>Web Design>Writing>Search

Use Product and Service Names as Keywords on Your Web Pages

I am quite surprised by what I have learned about the effectiveness of product names as organic search keywords.

Usborne, Nick. Excess Voice (2006). Articles>Web Design>Writing>Metadata

Using the Web in the Writing Classroom: A Preliminary Study  

Popular opinion maintains that people should be able to locate, collect, and evaluate information on the world-wide web without any substantial instruction. To test this premise eighty students at four disciplinary divergent schools participated in a study to evaluate their performance in retrieving and assessing electronic information. While the author is willing to admit that changes in performance are likely to occur over time, the present study found students (and by extension employee) performance to be relatively poor.

Rubens, Philip. STC Proceedings (1998). Articles>Education>Web Design>Writing

Using Web Tools to Communicate about Risks to the Public  

Communicating health, safety, and environmental risks to the public and to the scientific, political, and business communities is a persuasive task as well as an informative one. The job is made easier if the assertions about risk can be backed up with empirical data. But risks are often characterized through the analysis of data sets containing thousands if not millions of measurements. Further, the collection of these data is often conducted by many research teams, and the results often appear in disparate portions of the scientific literature or regulatory reports. On top of all this, environmental, safety, and health data compilations are frequently massive. As a result, finding needed data can be difficult, and understanding it can be bewildering. Web tools are available that synthesize these data and present the information they contain in an organized, understand-able fashion. In doing so, they help risk communicators to focus their writing on a specific topic and to base their assertions on hard facts.

O'Hara, Frederick M., Jr. and Frederick W. Stoss. STC Proceedings (2001). Articles>Risk Communication>Web Design>Writing

Watch for the Moment When You Hit Your "Confident Writing Zone"

When you have written a few pages that came out easily, and are all in the same confident, relaxed tone, that's the time to sit back and see what you have done. Re-read those pages. Become intimately familiar with the tone and style you have adopted. And then...at least this is what I did...go back and edit your earlier pages, particularly those which no longer seem to ring true, or feel quite right.

Usborne, Nick. Excess Voice (2007). Articles>Web Design>Writing

Web Page Headlines - Keep them Clear and Simple

If a web page doesn’t have a clear, simple headline at the top, it should. A headline is the fastest way to help a new reader find out what the page is about. It’s a clue, it provides direction.

Usborne, Nick. Excess Voice (2005). Articles>Web Design>Writing

Web Site Copy is about More Than Keywords

For writers who focus too intently on keywords and phrases, there is a danger. A danger in optimizing your pages for good keywords? Yes, I think so.

Usborne, Nick. Excess Voice (2004). Articles>Web Design>Writing>Search

Web Text That's Worth It: The Six Most Underrated Types of Digital Copy

Digital copy is underappreciated, underrated and - astonishingly - still the poor cousin of the web relaunch process.

E-Consultancy (2008). Articles>Web Design>Writing

Web Writing Guidelines Backed by Research

In the past, I have been bothered by the lack of a coherent summary of research on web writing. In November 2003 the problem was solved by the (US) National Cancer Institute, for the time being, at least.

McAlpine, Rachel. Quality Web Content (2004). Articles>Web Design>Writing>Standards

Web Writing: Create Writing Flow With Four Uncommon Connectors

Connectors -- conjunctions, punctuation, and transitional phrases -- allow readers to process information promptly by creating balance and relationships between sentence parts. The connectors are performing the same work as verbs, objects, modifiers and multiple subjects.

Franz, Catherine. Klariti (2005). Articles>Web Design>Writing

Weblogs and the Mass Amateurization of Publishing

A lot of people in the weblog world are asking 'How can we make money doing this?' The answer is that most of us can't. Weblogs are not a new kind of publishing that requires a new system of financial reward. Instead, weblogs mark a radical break.

Shirky, Clay. Shirky.com (2002). Articles>Web Design>Writing>Blogging

Weblogs Revisited: The Phenomenon of Public Digital Journals

Notwithstanding the fact that lexicographers have come up with definitions for blog, if you asked a few dozen bloggers what makes a blog a blog, you would probably get a few dozen answers.

Kissell, Joe. Interesting Thing of the Day (2004). Articles>Web Design>Writing>Blogging

Weblogs, Rhetoric, Community, and Culture

Looking at blogs as rhetorical artifacts allows scholars to examine the ways in which they contribute to changing what it means to communicate online. To this end, the articles presented here view the blog through the lens of their social, cultural, and rhetorical features and functions. Through study of the language, discourse, and communicative practices of bloggers, the authors provide insight into weblogs as a means of representing and expressing the self, forming identity, facilitating student-centered learning, building community, and disseminating information.

Gurak, Laura J., Smiljana Antonijevic, Laurie Johnson, Clancy Ratliff and Jessica Reyman. Into the Blogosphere (2004). Articles>Web Design>Writing>Blogging

What Kind of Web Writer are You?

Web writers are divided up into two groups: content writers and copywriters.

Usborne, Nick. Excess Voice (2005). Articles>Web Design>Writing