Style Guide for Electronic Communications
Writing for the Web
People read screens differently than they read print. Website visitors scan for links and key words. They hunt for words and phrases that mean something to them or, at least, appear to. They are ready to click the "Back" button at the first sign that your site does not offer what they are looking for. Even seasoned writers can find it challenging to write for this medium.
What can you, as a writer, do to keep visitors interested long enough to inform, motivate, persuade, and serve them? And even encourage them to come back? Take your mouse off the "Back" button and read on.
Becoming a More Effective Online Communicator
Define your site goals and audience
Defining your website's purpose and primary audience is a critical step toward creating more focused and effective content.
Content should support your site's goals
Each page of your website should support your goals, whatever they are. Also think about the links you include to other websites. Does the link enhance your readers' visit to your site? Have you given them some context to understand why you are directing them to another site?
Defining your audience
While it's okay to have more than one audience, be sure to define your primary audience. Who are they? What do they want? Is it an internal or external audience? What do you have to give them? What do you want them to do? Write down this definition and keep it for reference. Use it as a guide for making decisions about how to write your content and what to include.
Write for your primary audience
Use your audience definition to determine:
- how much information and context your readers will need to understand your topic.
- what terms you will need to define.
- how formal or informal your tone should be.
- how much support your points may need.
If your goal is to motivate, persuade, or serve, using a conversational tone—"you," "your," "we," and "our"—can engage your reader. With an internal audience, jargon and shoptalk may help you communicate more efficiently but would probably be puzzling to an external audience.
Sometimes legal language, which is not conversational, is necessary, particularly when the topic is a policy or a legal matter. While you may not be able to use "you" and "we," this does not mean that you have to dispense with communicating as clearly and concisely as you can. Especially in policy or legal matters, visitors need precise, careful wording to understand terms and the steps that they need to take.
Example
Primary audience: prospective CLA students. Other audiences: parents, faculty, and staff.
Before: "CLA student communities are designed to provide CLA undergraduate students with the information and support they need to succeed at the U of M and make the most of their CLA education."
After: "CLA student communities provide the information and support you need to succeed at the U of M and make the most of your CLA education."
Make main topics easy for visitors to find or understand
Remember, online visitors scan for what they are seeking. Use the following techniques to aid scanning:
- bullets
- bold keywords
- simple sentence constructions for quicker comprehension
- frequent, clear, and relevant subheadings.
Start with the main topics; provide more detail later
Use the inverted pyramid method in your writing. Start with your main point, follow with supporting information, and end with more detail on a subsequent webpage or farther down the page. Users who are scanning your paragraphs will quickly see what each one is about.
Keep it short
Be ruthless about paring your text. Go through it several times, asking yourself whether each word or phrase is necessary. Keep paragraphs short (about 50 words).
Protect your site's credibility
Provide content that is useful to your audience. Think about their interests and needs. Check carefully for typos and grammatical errors. Leave hyperbole out of your writing.
Improve your writing by reading
Many online and printed texts have been published about writing for the web. A few recommendations for online resources are listed below.
Audience
E-gineer
"Web Writing for Many Interest Levels"
Nathan Wallace
http://www.e-gineer.com/articles/web-writing-for-many-interest-levels.phtml
Wallace's article includes tips on writing clear headings and summaries to help readers quickly determine whether your content is what they are looking for.
Writing @ CSU
Writing Guides
Colorado State University (CSU)
http://writing.colostate.edu/guides/
CSU has developed two useful writing guides on determining your audience and writing for them and establishing the purpose for your writing (and how your audience can affect purpose).
- "Introduction: Audience"
http://writing.colostate.edu/guides/processes/audmod/ - "Introduction: Purpose"
http://writing.colostate.edu/guides/processes/purpose/
Inverted pyramid
useit.com: Alertbox
"Inverted Pyramids in Cyberspace"
Jakob Nielsen
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9606.html
Jakob Nielsen's usability studies have been a foundation for much of the advice on writing and organizing text for the web. This article from 1996 on writing inverted pyramids for websites is still relevant today.
Tips on writing for the web
ewrite Homepage
Marilynne Rudick and Leslie O'Flahavan
http://www.ewriteonline.com/
This site has articles that discuss good web writing and e-mail writing. Some of the content pertains to e-business, but there is a lot of good information on writing effectively for the web.
Eldis
http://www.eldis.org/tales/writing/index.htm
The Eldis website covers effective ways to adapt research results for online viewing. It includes basic design issues, using the inverted pyramid to present research papers, and how people read online.
New Thinking Newsletter
Gerry McGovern
http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/new_thinking.htm
McGovern publishes a weekly e-mail newsletter about web content management, information architecture, writing for the web, and other subjects. McGovern maintains a newsletter archive organized by subjects, including writing for the web, content management, and design topics.
Quality Web Content
Rachel McAlpine
http://www.webpagecontent.com/arc_display/5/
This site from New Zealand targets its audience as people who write for business and government, but it still has a lot of useful information for anyone writing for the web. Use the articles section; use the search engine to find your topic among McAlpine's many articles. Or you can just browse the lists of article titles.
Repurposing Print Materials for the Web
Turning print materials into online content, or repurposing, should be done with caution. The ease of uploading files can make it tempting to include all kinds of materials in your website. Doing this indiscriminately, however, results in clutter that turns off your visitors—and your key messages can get lost. Remember that people scan when they are reading online. What works well in print does not always convert well to the web.
How to decide whether to repurpose
Marilynne Rudick and Leslie O'Flahavan have written an excellent article on repurposing print for the web, "Repurposing Print Documents for the Web: Five Questions To Answer Before You Repurpose." To find it, visit http://www.ewriteonline.com/. Go to "Articles," then "Web Writing," and then select the above title from the list of articles.
Rudick and O'Flahavan ask you to ask yourself the following five questions before you convert your document:
- Will my site visitors want this content?
Know your audience. Is this content something useful? Don't slap content up because you can. - Is online text the best format for this content?
Ask yourself whether your visitors would prefer to read the text online or whether a printable version would be more appropriate. Is it a really long piece? Maybe a printable version would be best. If your material has a lot of graphics, converting it to online text may ruin its content. - Does the content support the mission of the site?
Would the content detract from the main mission of the site because it is unrelated? If so, it is probably best not to post it, or perhaps you need to reexamine your site's mission. - Will the content integrate into the existing site structure?
When you are deciding whether to repurpose a print document, you should consider how it fits into your existing site. Where will it belong? Are you trying to hammer a square peg into a round hole? Is it worth it? - Does this content have a long enough shelf life to make repurposing worthwhile?
Repurposing material for the web can be time-consuming. If the piece is something that will be outdated quickly, it's probably best not to invest the time.
If you decide that the document is worth repurposing, but you do not have the time or resources to spend on that lengthy process, Rudick and O'Flahavan suggest two options:
- repurpose by providing choices: the "Bite, Snack, And Meal Approach," or
- the value-added approach: "Print Plus."
The Bite-Snack-Meal approach
Rudick and O'Flahavan have developed what they call a Bite, Snack, and Meal formula for web writing. The idea is to provide readers content in various sizes to satisfy their appetites for the information.
A "Bite" is a powerful message headline. It is concisely written to let the reader know the essential information contained in the rest of the document. An example might be "Future of forests set forth by feds." The Bite is a link that takes the reader to the full article, or the Meal.
A "Snack" is a two- or three-sentence summary of the full article, the Meal. Under the headline, or Bite, above, for example, you might find: "Federal officials unveiled a long-range plan today for Minnesota's two national forests, and both environmental groups and timber industry leaders criticized the effort for allowing either too much or too little logging." Snacks, or summaries, can also be more elaborate—for example, a paragraph-length summary with links to the relevant portions of the full document. Readers then have the choice of reading just the summary, just portions of the full document that interest them, or the full document itself.
Lastly, the "Meal" is the full document. If the document is especially long, it should be provided in PDF so readers may download it in a printable format for offline reading.
- For real-life examples of the Bite-Snack-Meal formula, visit the Star Tribune website at http://www.startribune.com and click on any of the main stories for the day. The headline will be the Bite, and the two or three sentences below the headline will be the Snack; when you click on the headline, which is also a link, you will connect to the Meal, the full story.
- To learn more about the Bite-Snack-Meal formula, you can read Rudick and O'Flahavan's article, "The Bite, The Snack, And The Meal: How To Feed Content-Hungry Site Visitors." To find it, visit http://www.ewriteonline.com/. Go to "Articles," then "Web Writing," and then select the above title from the list of articles.
The Print Plus approach
Supplementing a lengthy and complex document with other information is another means to help readers digest what they are reading. You might add a table of contents to help readers find what they are looking for. You might provide related links that will help readers make sense of what they are reading or help them find more information. This does not mean providing links to just any related websites. It means doing the research to find the resources that will truly assist your readers.
Next Section: Headings and Capitalization