Front Cover -- Praise for Letting Go of the Words -- Letting Go of the Words -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Foreword -- Acknowledgments -- Introducing Letting Go of the Words -- What's new? -- What's the book like? -- Letting Go is about writing and design, not technology -- Letting Go includes many examples -- Letting Go reflects user-experience design -- You can jump around in the book -- Let's continue to converse -- 1 Content! Content! Content! -- People come for the content -- Content = conversation -- Web = phone, not file cabinet -- Online, people skim and scan -- People do read online - sometimes -- People don't read more because … -- Writing well = having successful conversations -- Answer your site visitors' questions -- Let your site visitors "grab and go" -- Encourage further use -- Market successfully to your site visitors -- Improve search engine optimization (SEO) -- Improve internal search -- Be accessible to all -- Three case studies -- Case Study 1-1: Conversing well with words -- Case Study 1-2: Conversing well with few words -- Case Study 1-3: Revising web words -- Summarizing Chapter 1 -- 2 Planning: Purposes, Personas, Conversations -- Why? Know what you want to achieve -- Focus on what you want your site visitors to do -- Be specific -- Think of SEO -- Think of universal usability -- Know your purposes for everything you write -- Who? What's the conversation? -- We all interpret as we read -- You can find out lots about your site visitors -- 1. Gather information about your site visitors -- 2. List groups of site visitors -- 3. List major characteristics for each group -- Key phrases or quotes -- Experience, expertise -- Emotions -- Values -- Technology -- Social and cultural environments and language ("context of use") -- Demographics -- 4. Understand the conversations they want to start -- Don't translate.

Analyze site searches -- Breathing life into your data with personas -- What is a persona? -- What makes up a persona? -- Picture and name -- Demographics -- Quotes, values, stories, tasks, and more -- How many personas? -- How do personas work with a web team? -- Breathing life into your data with scenarios -- How long? How many? -- Scenarios for whom? -- How do scenarios relate to content? -- Summarizing Chapter 2 -- Interlude 1 Content Strategy -- Why is content strategy so important? -- What is content strategy? -- Content strategy is about governance -- Content strategy is about messages, media, style, and tone -- Content strategy is about people, processes, and technology -- Content strategy is about purposes, personas, and scenarios -- Content strategy supports and carries out business strategy -- What does content strategy cover? -- Content strategy includes all communication channels -- Social media strategy is part of content strategy -- Who does content strategy? -- Seven steps to carry out a content strategy -- 1. Inventory the current content -- 2. Decide on messages, media, style, and tone -- 3. Start an organic style guide - anduse it -- 4. Create workable designs that focus on content -- 5. Audit the current content - and act on the audit -- 6. Test the strategy -- 7. Plan for the future -- 3 Designing for Easy Use -- Who should read this chapter - and why? -- Integrate content and design from the beginning -- Answer content and design questions together -- Use real content throughout the process -- Build in flexibility for universal usability -- Make adjusting text size obvious -- Make all the text adjust -- Allow other changes - contrast, keyboard, voice, and more -- Check the colors for color-blind site visitors -- Think about the cultural meaning of colors -- Color -- 1. Work with your brand colors.

2. Use light on dark sparingly -- 3. Keep the background clear -- 4. Keep the contrast high -- Space -- 1. Create consistent patterns -- 2. Align elements on a grid -- 3. Keep active space in your content -- 4. Beware of false bottoms -- 5. Don't let headings float -- 6. Don't center text -- Typography -- 1. Set a legible sans serif font as the default -- 2. Make the default text size legible for your visitors -- 3. Set a medium line length as the default -- 4. Don't write in all capitals -- 5. Underline only links -- 6. Use italics sparingly -- Putting it all together: A case study -- Case Study 3-1: Revising a poorly designed web page -- Summarizing Chapter 3 -- 4 Starting Well: Home Pages -- Home pages - content-rich with few words -- 1. Be findable through search engines -- Your keywords must match searchers' keywords -- Gaming the system doesn't work -- Remarkable content matters -- 2. Identify the site -- 3. Set the site's tone and personality -- 4. Help people get a sense of what the site is all about -- 5. Continue the conversation quickly -- Focus on your key visitors and their key tasks -- Case Study 4-1: Focusing on personas and tasks -- Let people start major tasks on the home page -- Make sure the forms are high on the page -- Don't put unnecessary forms up front -- 6. Send each person on the right way -- Put Search near the top -- Use your site visitors' words in your links -- In mobile versions, strip down to the essentials -- Summarizing Chapter 4 -- 5 Getting There: Pathway Pages -- 1. Site visitors hunt first -- 2. People don't want to read while hunting -- Case Study 5-1: Making links clear on a pathway page -- 3. A pathway page is like a table of contents -- Watch the jargon -- Don't assume a picture is enough -- Write in fragments -- Case Study 5-2: Getting people to the links quickly -- 5. Three clicks is a myth.

Don't make people think -- Keep people from needing to go back -- 6. Many people choose the first option -- Summarizing Chapter 5 -- 6 Breaking up and Organizing Content -- 1. Think "information," not "document" -- Need: Right information in the right amount -- Problem: Little pieces of paper get lost too easily -- Solution: Online, "index cards" work well -- 2. Divide your content thoughtfully -- Divide web content by questions people ask -- Divide web content by topic or task -- Divide web content by product type -- Divide web content by information type -- Separating and linking related information -- Moving the conversation ahead through related links -- Meshing marketing calendars and editorial calendars -- Divide web content by people -- Dividing by people on the home page -- Dividing by people below the home page -- Divide web content by life event -- Divide web content by time or sequence -- 3. Consider how much to put on one web page -- What does the site visitor want? -- How long is the page? -- What's the download time? -- How much do people want to print? -- What will I do for small screens - and for social media? -- 4. Use PDFs sparingly and only for good reasons -- Never say "never" -- When might a PDF file be appropriate? -- Sometimes, having both PDF and HTML is best -- When is a PDF file not appropriate? -- When people don't want the whole document -- When people are mostly on mobile devices -- When people don't want to print -- When people are not comfortable with PDF files -- When people need accessible information -- Why else is a PDF not appropriate? -- PDF files are optimized for the printed page -- PDF files usually come from paper documents -- Summarizing Chapter 6 -- 7 Focusing on Conversations and Key Messages -- Seven guidelines for focusing on conversations and key messages -- 1. Give people only what they need.

Revising content you already have -- Writing new content -- Case Study 7-1: Using personas and their conversations to plan your content -- 2. Cut! Cut! Cut! And cut again! -- 3. Think "bite, snack, meal" -- 4. Start with your key message -- Key message first = inverted pyramid style -- Eye-tracking shows the need for key message first -- 5. Layer information -- Layering with an overlay -- Layering with progressive disclosure -- Case Study 7-2: Opening layers on the same web page -- 6. Break down walls of words -- Case Study 7-3: Breaking down walls of words made the difference! -- 7. Plan to share and engage through social media -- Summarizing Chapter 7 -- Interlude 2 Finding Marketing Moments -- Marketing on the web is different: Pull not push -- Join the site visitor's conversation -- Find the right marketing moments -- Don't miss good marketing moments -- Never stop the conversation -- 8 Announcing Your Topic with a Clear Headline -- Seven guidelines for headlines that work well -- 1. Use your site visitors' words -- 2. Be clear instead of cute -- 3. Think about your global audience -- 4. Try for a medium length (about eight words) -- 5. Use a statement, question, or call to action -- 6. Combine labels (nouns) with more information -- 7. Add a short description if people need it -- Summarizing Chapter 8 -- 9 Including Useful Headings -- Good headings help readers in many ways -- Thinking about headings also helps authors -- Eleven guidelines for writing useful headings -- 1. Don't slap headings into old content -- 2. Start by outlining -- 3. Choose a good heading style: Questions, statements, verb phrases -- Questions as headings -- Answer your site visitors' questions -- Case Study 9-1: Answering your site visitors' questions -- Statements as headings -- Verb phrases as headings -- 4. Use nouns and noun phrases sparingly.

Sometimes a label (a noun) is enough.