Transcript Oral Presentation on "Be Succinct! (Writing for the Web)"

“Be Succinct! (Writing for the
Web)”
Andrew Dodge
June 14th 2004
Guidelines for Web Documents
Be succinct
Write for Scannability
Use Hypertext
Short Texts
Reading from computer screens is about
25% slower than reading from paper
Write 50% less text so users don’t have to
scroll
Screen readability problems will be solved
in the future
Scannability
Users scan text and pick out keywords,
sentences, and paragraphs of interest
Skimming instead of reading
Write articles with 2 or 3 levels of
headlines
Meaningful rather than “cute” headings
Use highlighting and emphasis
Hypertext
Make text shorter by splitting into sections
and connect through hypertext links
Stories should NOT be broken up
Sections should focus on a certain topic
Structure based on an audience analysis
“Inverse pyramid” principle