Letting go of the words: writing Web content that works

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