Making Sure Words Communicate

Words, graphics, and photographs are the tools used to communicate with customers, and a Web site is one way to deliver that message. We need to choose our words carefully.

Allen, Cliff. Allen.com (2001). Articles>Web Design>Writing

Making the Web Friendlier for Lower-Literacy Users  

Describes techniques for improving the experience of lower-literacy Internet users that do not violate the principles of Web design for other users.

Summers, Kathryn. Intercom (2004). Design>Web Design>Accessibility>Writing

Making the Writing "Easy to Scan"

Give the reader the ability to quickly peruse the information presented and extract the information they need. For example, if there is a lot of information, and the reader is required to scroll the screen to see content 'below the fold', an overview would probably be a very good idea. Contrariwise, if the article is short, and can be quickly scanned (especially if you can do so without scrolling the page), providing an overview might be counterproductive.

Rockley Group, The (2008). Articles>Web Design>Writing

Metaphors and Website Design: A Cross-Cultural Case Study of the Tide.com Stain Detective

This study investigated the generalization of a home metaphor used in the Tide.com Stain Detective (Nelson & Hibner, 2003) to middle-class Indian females. The stain detective was developed with American women based on a card sorting activity. A similar card sorting activity was conducted with six Indian females. Results showed that the Indian participants grouped the stains by the amount of work that was required to remove it, rather than by the location where it occurred.

Shaikh, A. Dawn, Barbara S. Chaparro, W. Todd Nelson and Anirudha Joshi. Usability News (2005). Design>Web Design>Writing>India

Mind Your Phraseology! Using Controlled Vocabularies to Improve Findability

Many moons ago I waited tables. One day our manager came down to tell us that from now on we were to refer to our customers as 'guests.' We also were to refer to courses as 'first course' and 'second course.' Our chef was French, and found the American use of 'entrée' for the main course annoying--in French 'entree' means appetizer. This was my first experience with a controlled vocabulary. A controlled vocabulary is simply what it sounds like: a way to control the meaning of the vocabulary used as well as keeping track of the related terms.

Wodtke, Christina. Digital Web Magazine (2002). Design>Web Design>Writing>Controlled Vocabulary

My Blog, My Outboard Brain

Theoretically, you can annotate your bookmarks, entering free-form reminders to yourself so that you can remember why you bookmarked this page or that one. I don't know about you, but I never actually got around to doing this. Until I started blogging.

Doctorow, Cory. O'Reilly and Associates (2002). Articles>Web Design>Writing>Blogging

National Policies for Government Web Writers

Every country has its own requirements for public sector web sites. Legislation and policies vary greatly, and express an attitude. I base my Quality Web Content workshops for government web content writers on the policy of the country concerned. Some countries consider that an accessible site requires accessible writing. Others don't.

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

New Roles for Technical Writers: Web Masters "Oh My Gosh, Now I Own the Web Page!"  

In my presentation, I share my experience as a new web master, focusing on how technical communicators are well-suited 10 becoming web masters. I discuss what to prepare for and how things change when you become the webmaster.

Gillihan, Dana L. STC Proceedings (1996). Careers>Web Design>Writing>Technical Writing

Newbie Web Author Checklist: Before You Publish That Project

If you've recently created your first website and you're getting ready to publish it, then this page is for you. I've helped hundreds of people create their first websites, and I really enjoy helping them move from their first tentative forays into electronic authorship to more advanced projects. Follow this checklist before you publish your web project, and you'll avoid many simple technical issues.

Jerz, Dennis G. Seton Hill University (2002). Articles>Web Design>Writing

Nourish Old Writing Skills, Add New Ones for the Web

The Web requires many of the same writing skills as print, but successful writers develop new ways of breaking up and linking.

Writing that Works (2003). Articles>Writing>Web Design

Organizing your Prose

Documents written to be read online must be concise and structured for scanning. People tend to skim Web pages rather than read them word by word. Use headings, lists, and typographical emphasis for words or sections you wish to highlight; these are the elements that will grab the user's attention during a quick scan. Keep these elements clear and precise — use your page and section heads to describe the material. The 'inverted pyramid' style used in journalism works well on Web pages, with the conclusion appearing at the beginning of a text. Place the important facts near the top of the first paragraph where users can find them quickly.

Lynch, Patrick J. and Sarah Horton. Yale University (1999). Design>Web Design>Writing

Passing the Ten-Second Test

When you make a web page easy to grasp, in the very first 10 seconds after a visitor arrives, you can both increase its credibility and improve its search engines ranking. Rachel shares precise methods for composing effective text for Web sites.

McAlpine, Rachel. Wise-Women (2004). Design>Web Design>Writing>Usability

Passive Voice Is Redeemed For Web Headings

Active voice is best for most Web content, but using passive voice can let you front-load important keywords in headings, blurbs, and lead sentences. This enhances scannability and thus SEO effectiveness.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2007). Articles>Web Design>Writing>Grammar

Penser "Multimédia"

Basé quasiment exclusivement sur le texte à ses débuts, Internet est devenu aujourd'hui un moyen d'expression multimédia, permettant d'intégrer tout autant des textes que des images, des vidéos, des sons , des animations, des programmes interactifs, etc. Ecrire pour Internet, c'est donc exploiter plusieurs supports d'expression.

Redaction (2004). Articles>Multimedia>Web Design>Writing

De Perfecte Tekst...Voor Het Web. Deel 1

Er heerst een enorme verwarring rond het fenomeen ‘tekst op internet’. Laten we het deze keer eens hebben over de ideale hoeveelheid woorden.

Pauwels, Marnix. de Lijst (2002). (Dutch) Articles>Web Design>Writing

Planning for One-to-One Web Marketing

The key to a successful advertising campaign is repetition. The same is true for a successful Web site. Marketing managers know that repeat contact with prospects develops an affinity for your products and services - and therefore, greater revenue.

Allen, Cliff. Allen.com (2003). Articles>Web Design>Marketing>Writing

Prepare Web Content and Organization For Your Audience

Communicators must know whether the audience consists of viewers, users or readers before selecting, writing and organizing content.

Writing that Works (2003). Articles>Web Design>Rhetoric>Writing

Presentation on Writing and Web 2.0

This is presentation Keith Hoffman gave on writing and Web 2.0 at the University of Wisconsin. If you recall, Keith wrote the feature article in January's Intercom on Web 2.0.

Hoffman, Keith. Tech Writer Voices (2007). Presentations>Web Design>Writing>Podcasts

Promiscuous Fictions

With little exaggeration it might be claimed that the primary emotion associated with popular thinking about blogging is anxiety. The number of bloggers and blogs is unwieldy and amorphous: to my mind a sublimity that is often associated with the innumerable swamps journalistic and other commentators who believe that one must, perforce, make some generalization about blogs, all blogs, every blog. Is there something that could be said about every blog? Where would one start?

Curtain, Tyler. Into the Blogosphere (2004). Articles>Web Design>Writing>Blogging

Providing Context for Ambiguous Link Phrases

This article demonstrates a technique that allows ambiguous link phrases to be rendered visually in a page, whilst making sense to screen readers, and other non-graphical devices, that might render the links out of context.

Lemon, Gez. Paciello Group, The (2007). Articles>Web Design>Writing>Hypertext

Putting the White Back in Strunk and White

In web design screeds, the most commonly cited book is not what you might expect. It is not by Jakob Nielsen or Jeffrey Zeldman or Edward Tufte. It's not even on design or typography or code. It is a thin volume of guidelines on writing by a professor 'at the closing of the first world war' and treasured by one student enough to put it into print. William Strunk was the professor, and E.B. White, author of Charlotte's Web, was that grateful student. White took the master's set of laws, removed some 'bewhiskered entries,' corrected some errors, and added his own chapter at the end for 'those who feel English prose composition is not only a necessary skill but a sensible pursuit as well.'

Wodtke, Christina. Boxes and Arrows (2006). Articles>Web Design>Writing>Minimalism

Quality Criteria for Indexes, Website Navigation and Search    

When users find the answers they are looking for, the investment in technical documentation gets a chance to pay off. In large volumes of technical information, just finding the answer can be half the battle. Microsoft found that users of its intranet were spending an average of 2.5 hours per day online - 50% of that being searching. This article was written as part of an experimental online workshop with the MITWA (Mentors, Indexers, Technical Writers & Associates) discussion group(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MITWA/). The article retains the workshop format including learning assignments.

Brown, Fred. International Journal for Technical Communication (2006). Articles>Information Design>Web Design>Technical Writing

A Quick Guide: Converting Print to Online  

A Quick Guide: Converting Print to Online tells you how to convert print-based documents to an online format. This is a task that many writers do in their real-world work lives on a daily basis. However, there is not enough information available for how to handle the various conversions, so I wrote this brief guide. The document is saved as a Portable Document File (PDF). To view it, you need to have a copy of Adobe® Acrobat® Reader™ 3.0 or later software installed on your PC.

Keller, Nancy L. EServer (2001). Design>Web Design>Writing>Adobe Acrobat

Reach Out and Touch Someone

The hardest part of communication lies in the many options we have available, and how tricky it can be to pick the right option for each individual member of our audience. When we write something, whether in print or online, we try to produce something that satisfies as many readers as possible because we require a 'one size fits all' solution: we're not physically present to tailor our approach to meet each individual's needs, and so must meet a range of needs in a single document. With print, we're stuck with static text: the text can't change until we rewrite it and distribute a new version. Moving information online makes it easier to revise and distribute information, but actually updating the information still requires a writer. Are there alternatives that make it easier to reach customers with our messages?

Hart, Geoffrey J.S. Geoff-Hart.com (2001). Articles>Web Design>Writing>Personalization

Reading and Writing the Web

The course provides a Humanities perspective on web design. It introduces students to basic issues and practices of web design, but also examines how web pages can be seen as texts that are amenable to rhetorical and cultural analysis.  Web sites embody 'architectures', which as MIT professor of architecture William Mitchell notes, raise many of the same issues of access, assembly, use, control, and community formation that occur with urban planning.  We will thus not only practice designing web pages, but we will also consider methods for interpreting and analyzing web sites.

Werry, Chris. San Diego State University. Academic>Courses>Web Design>Writing