Web Writing - Tips and Guidance

May 2001

Few individual pursuits evoke as much passion, frustration and pride as writing. Lengthy tomes have been written about the art, craft and science of putting pen to paper. There are numerous books, articles and Web sites advising and teaching people how to write.

The relative youth of the Internet has spawned new materials about how to write specifically for this new medium. What students of the Web and students of writing will discover is that many of the principles that guide solid Web writing in fact guide all writing.

Our goal here is not to add one more exhaustive guide to the growing collection of writing resources. This section is intended to be a quick reference for non-writers to some of the key principles behind good Web writing.

This section does not address information architecture or structure.

Tips

Deliver your information: Good writing (and good editing) should never get in the way of telling your story. Your job is to present facts, persuade readers and motivate action. Your goal is to inform, educate and motivate, not win a Pulitzer Prize.

Keep it short: You probably already know that most Web users scan and skim as opposed to read, however, that doesn't mean that your text needs to sacrifice quality or depth. Keep your top level pages short and crisp, giving readers the option to read at greater depth at lower level pages. It may be that most people arrive at your pages because they are hunting for specific information, not fishing for something to read. Both types of readers should be rewarded at your site.

Monitor sentence length: Not every sentence needs to be nine words long. Given the lengthy, multi-word names of some of the world's sustainable development organizations and some of the complex science and policy in which they engage, keeping all sentences short is impossible and not necessarily the desirable course of action. Varying sentence length will engage the reader and allow the writer to communicate effectively. (The first sentence of this paragraph is nine words long; the second is 39 words long; and the third is 14 words long.)

Keep your verbs active, not passive, whenever possible: This tip has been heard by you before. You have heard this tip before. Nothing more needs to be said about this so we will say nothing else.

Keep the language simple: Get right to the point, minimize jargon and don't use three words where one will do. (Say "review," not "perform a review"; say "analyze," not "conduct an analysis.") An informed reader will feel alienated if they have to reach for a dictionary or if they are jarred or bored by a turn of phrase.

Accept reading habits; don't try to change them: Most readers scan first level pages. Accept this. Use headers and subheads that entice readers to proceed; bold a few strategic words in the copy; and create lists where relevant. Caution: If you bold, italicize or change the colour of too many words or phrases, nothing will seem important. Be discriminating.

Avoid clichés: Using clichés, colloquialisms and slang will alienate English-speakers who will see your serious work as having been delivered too casually. It will also alienate people for whom English is not a first language. Clichés, colloquialisms and slang are more effective in print where people are likely to spend more time with the text.

Self-editing

Self-editing is one of the most critical, but most often overlooked stages of the writing process. Self-editing allows the writer to test the product against the original vision and outline and to view the product as a reader might. Writing without self-editing is like cooking without tasting. Try these self-editing tips:

• Do not self-edit immediately upon completion of the writing. Step back, spend days or hours away from the work (time permitting).
• Resist the urge to change things immediately. Sometimes your first instincts are correct. Read your text in its entirety before changing anything.
• Read your text out loud. If it "sounds" right, chances are it will read right. Reading out loud is an especially good technique for catching passive verbs.
• For proofreading, read your text backwards. By reading backwards you can see each word on its own and out of context. This increases your chances of finding errors.
• Read the document in sections, out of order. Is each section strong? Does each section have a message or a function? Could each section stand on its own? What can you do to strengthen the weaker sections?
• Change the function of your outline. Chances are you have strayed somewhat from your original notes and outline. After you've self-edited, look at your outline as a checklist. What made it to your final text? What got excluded? What got added? Have you forgotten anything?

Quote:
Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.
William Strunk, Jr., The Elements of Style.