Writing for the Web

by Crawford Kilian
4th edition, Self-Counsel Press, 2009

User level: Novice upwards

£11.00

Nielsen recommends this as a ‘faster read’ than Letting Go of the Words.

This succinct book focuses on structuring, organising, writing and editing good web text, with add-on chapters on blogs, corporate web writing, marketing on the web and FAQs.

Kilian’s is the only book in this section to give details of the various reading levels – see pages 78–9.

Key points:

• Unlike print, hypertext relies on ideas that stand alone
• Users want ‘hit & run’ retrieval
• Text needs to follow three basic principles – orientation (where am I and how do I get round the site?), information (I need text to be correct and to be clear at first glance) and action (what do I do next?)
• Use ‘you’ throughout the site
• Use headings and subheadings to orientate the user
• Add interest to your links by adding a hook rather than the ubiquitous ‘Click here’
• Draft a ‘client brief’ for your site – e.g. what personality traits should it convey? What are the demographics and values of your target audience/s?
• For body text, use either a ‘serif’ font (with little hooks) or one specially designed for use on the screen, such as Verdana
• Use bulleted lists to break up the text

See also