Letting Go of the Words : Writing Web Content that Works.
Title:
Letting Go of the Words : Writing Web Content that Works.
Author:
Redish, Janice (Ginny).
ISBN:
9780080555386
Personal Author:
Physical Description:
1 online resource (385 pages)
Series:
Interactive Technologies
Contents:
Front Cover -- Letting Go of the Words: Writing Web Content that Works -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- Foreword -- Acknowledgments -- Chapter 1. Content! Content! Content! -- People come to web sites for the content -- Web users skim and scan -- Web users read, but -- They don't read more because -- What makes writing for the web work well? -- Introducing Letting Go of the Words -- Chapter 2. People! People! People! -- We all interpret as we read -- Successful writers focus on their audiences -- Seven steps to understanding your audiences -- 1. List your major audiences -- 2. Gather information about your audiences -- 3. List major characteristics for each audience -- 4. Gather your audiences' questions, tasks, and stories -- 5. Use your information to create personas -- 6. Include the persona's goals and tasks -- 7. Use your information to write scenarios for your site -- Chapter 3. Starting Well: Home Pages -- Home pages - the 10-minute mini-tour -- Identifying the site, establishing the brand -- Setting the tone and personality of the site -- Helping people get a sense of what the site is all about -- Letting people start key tasks immediately -- Sending each person on the right way, effectively and efficiently -- Putting it all together: A case study -- Building your site up from the content - not only down from the home page -- Chapter 4. Getting There: Pathway Pages -- Most site visitors are on a hunt - a mission - and the pathway is just to get them there -- People don't want to read a lot while hunting -- A pathway page is like a table of contents -- Sometimes, short descriptions help -- 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) -- Marketing is likely to be ignored on a pathway page.
The smoothness of the path is more important than the number of clicks (within reason) -- Many people choose the first option that looks plausible -- Many site visitors are landing inside your site -- Chapter 5. Writing Information, Not Documents -- Breaking up large documents -- Deciding how much to put on one web page -- PDF - yes or no? -- Chapter 6. Focusing on Your Essential Messages -- Six guidelines for focusing on your essential messages -- 1. Give people only what they need -- 2. Cut! Cut! Cut! And cut again! -- 3. Start with the key point. Write in inverted pyramid style -- 4. Break down walls of words -- 5. Market by giving useful information -- 6. Layer information to help web users -- Chapter 7. Designing Your Web Pages for Easy Use -- Fourteen guidelines for helpful design -- 1. Make the page elements obvious, using patterns and alignment -- 2. Consider the entire site when planning the design -- 3. Work with templates -- 4. Use space effectively. Keep active space in your content -- 5. Beware of false bottoms -- 6. Don't let headings float -- 7. Don't center text -- 8. Set a sans serif font as the default -- 9. Think broadly about users and their situations when setting type size -- 10. Use a fluid layout with a medium line length as default -- 11. Don't write in all capitals -- 12. Don't underline anything but links. Use italics sparingly -- 13. Provide good contrast between text and background -- 14. Think about all your site visitors when you choose colors -- Interlude: The New Life of Press Releases -- The old - and ongoing - life of a press release -- What has changed? -- How do people use press releases on the web? -- What should we do? -- Does it make a difference? -- What would the difference look like? -- Chapter 8. Tuning Up Your Sentences -- Ten guidelines for tuning up your sentences.
1. Talk to your site visitors. Use "you" -- 2. Show that you are a person and that your organization includes people -- 3. Write in the active voice (most of the time) -- 4. Write simple, short, straightforward sentences -- 5. Cut unnecessary words -- 6. Give extra information its own place -- 7. Keep paragraphs short -- 8. Start with the context - first things first, second things second -- 9. Put the action in the verbs, not the nouns -- 10. Use your web users' words -- Putting it all together -- Chapter 9. Using Lists and Tables -- Nine guidelines for writing useful web lists -- Six guidelines for creating useful web tables -- 1. Use lists to make information easy to grab -- 2. Keep most lists short -- 3. Format lists to make them work well -- 4. Match bullets to your site's personality -- 5. Use numbered lists for instructions -- 6. Turn paragraphs into steps -- 7. Give even complex instructions as steps -- 8. Keep the sentence structure in lists parallel -- 9. Don't number list items if they are not steps and people might confuse them with steps -- 10. Use tables when you have numbers to compare -- 11. Use tables for a series of "if, then" sentences -- 12. Think about tables as answers to questions -- 13. Think carefully about what to put in the left column of a table -- 14. Keep tables simple -- 15. Format tables on the web so that people focus on the information and not on the lines -- Chapter 10. Breaking Up Your Text with Headings -- Good headings help readers in many ways -- Thinking about headings also helps writers -- Don't just slap headings into old content -- Twelve guidelines for writing useful headings -- 1. Start by outlining your content with headings -- 2. Ask questions as headings when people come with questions -- 3. Give statement headings to convey key messages -- 4. Use action phrase headings for instructions.
5. Use noun and noun phrase headings sparingly -- 6. Put your site visitors' words in the headings -- 7. Exploit the power of parallelism -- 8. Don't dive deep -- keep to no more than two levels of headings (below the page title) -- 9. Make the heading levels obvious -- 10. Distinguish headings from text with type size and bold or color -- 11. Help people jump to the topic they need with same-page links -- 12. Evaluate! Read the headings to see what you have done -- Interlude: Legal Information Can Be Understandable, Too -- Make the information legible -- Make sure your legal information prints well -- Use site visitors' words in your headings -- Avoid technical language -- Avoid archaic legal language -- Apply all the clear writing techniques to your legal information -- Chapter 11. Using Illustrations Effectively -- Illustrations serve different purposes -- Nine general guidelines for using illustrations effectively -- 1. Don't make people wonder what or why -- 2. Choose an appropriate size -- 3. Use illustrations to support, not hide, content -- 4. In pictures of people, show diversity -- 5. Don't make content look like ads -- 6. Don't annoy people with blinking, rolling, waving, or wandering text or pictures -- 7. Use animation where it helps - not just for show -- 8. Don't make people wait through splash or Flash -- 9. Make illustrations accessible -- Chapter 12. Writing Meaningful Links -- Twelve guidelines for writing meaningful links -- 1. Don't make new program and product names into links by themselves -- 2. Rethink document titles and headings that turn into links -- 3. Think ahead. Match links and page titles -- 4. Be as explicit as you can in the space you have - and make more space if you need it -- 5. Use action phrases for action links -- 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 -- 8. Make the link meaningful - not Click here, not just More -- 9. Coordinate when you have multiple, similar links -- 10. Don't embed links if you want people to stay with your information -- 11. If you use bullets with links, make them active, too -- 12. Make both unvisited and visited links obvious -- Chapter 13. Getting from Draft to Final Web Pages -- Think of writing as revising drafts -- Review and edit your own work -- Ask colleagues and others to read and comment -- Put your ego in the drawer - cheerfully -- Work with a writing specialist or editor -- Make reviews work for you and your web site visitors -- Interlude: Creating an Organic Style Guide -- Use a style guide to keep the site consistent -- Don't reinvent -- Appoint an owner -- Make it easy to create, to find, and to use -- Bibliography -- Subject Index -- Index of Web Sites Shown as Examples.
Abstract:
"Redish has done her homework and created a thorough overview of the issues in writing for the Web. Ironically, I must recommend that you read her every word so that you can find out why your customers won't read very many words on your website -- and what to do about it." -- Jakob Nielsen, Principal, Nielsen Norman Group "There are at least twelve billion web pages out there. Twelve billion voices talking, but saying mostly nothing. If just 1% of those pages followed Ginny's practical, clear advice, the world would be a better place. Fortunately, you can follow her advice for 100% of your own site's pages, so pick up a copy of Letting Go of the Words and start communicating effectively today. --Lou Rosenfeld, co-author, Information Architecture for the World Wide Web On the web, whether on the job or at home, we usually want to grab information and use it quickly. We go to the web to get answers to questions or to complete tasks - to gather information, reading only what we need. We are all too busy to read much on the web. This book helps you write successfully for web users. It offers strategy, process, and tactics for creating or revising content for the web. It helps you plan, organize, write, design, and test web content that will make web users come back again and again to your site. Learn how to create usable and useful content for the web from the master − Ginny Redish. Ginny has taught and mentored hundreds of writers, information designers, and content owners in the principles and secrets of creating web information that is easy to scan, easy to read, and easy to use. This practical, informative book will help anyone creating web content do it better. Features * Clearly-explained guidelines with full color illustrations and examples from actual web sites throughout the book. * Written in easy-to-read style with many "befores" and
"afters." * Specific guidelines for web-based press releases, legal notices, and other documents. * Tips on making web content accessible for people with special needs. Janice (Ginny) Redish has been helping clients and colleagues communicate clearly for more than 20 years. For the past ten years, her focus has been helping people create usable and useful web sites. She is co-author of two classic books on usability: A Practical Guide to Usability Testing (with Joseph Dumas), and User and Task Analysis for Interface Design (with JoAnn Hackos), and is the recipient of many awards. * Clearly-explained guidelines with full color illustrations and examples from actual web sites throughout the book. * Written in easy-to-read style with many "befores" and "afters." * Specific guidelines for web-based press releases, legal notices, and other documents. * Tips on making web content accessible for people with special needs.
Local Note:
Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2017. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.
Genre:
Electronic Access:
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