Writing for the Web

Research on how users read on the Web and how authors should write their Web pages.

• Short summary of the original findings: How users read on the Web [read this one first]
• How little do users read? — users spend 4.4 seconds for every extra 100 words on a page
• F-shaped pattern for reading web content, as seen in eyetracking studies
• Eyetracking of people reading email newsletters
• Low-literacy users exhibit different behaviors
• PR and press releases on corporate websites (103 design guidelines based on usability studies of how journalists visit company sites)
• Writing style for print vs. Web
• Blah-blah text: Keep, cut, or kill?
• Email newsletters (165 design guidelines: scannability even more important than for websites)
• Writing transactional email and confirmation messages
• Teenagers on the Web: poor reading skills and low patience levels mean that text has to be ultra-concise for teens and that more information must be communicated in images
• Tagline blues: what's the site about?
• Passive voice is redeemed for Web headings
• World's Best Headlines: BBC News
• Use old keywords when writing to be found by search users
• Show numbers as numerals when writing for online readers
• Microcontent: writing headlines, page titles, and email subject lines
• Nanocontent: the first two words of links and titles
• Company name first in microcontent? Sometimes!
• Long vs. short articles as content strategy
• Kindle Content Design (writing for Amazon.com's e-book reader)
• iPad and Kindle Reading Speeds
• Write inverted pyramids in cyberspace
• Information pollution
• American English vs. British English
• Twitter Postings: Iterative Design
• Distributing Content Through Social Networks and RSS (Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, and RSS)
• Corporate Blogs: Front Page Structure
• Intranet usability, including guidelines for intranet content, news on intranets, HR manuals, and how to present information about projects, teams, and individuals on intranets
• Full paper documenting the original research from 1997 (long): Concise, SCANNABLE, and Objective: How to Write for the Web (unfortunately this paper was written for print and not online)
• Case study: Applying Writing Guidelines to Web Pages improved usability by 159% when rewriting sample pages from a popular website
• How to write "About Us" pages for a company's or organization's website

Other Writing Sites

Our research shows that external links enhance the credibility of a site, so here are links to some other good sites about how to write for the Web :-)

• GoodDocuments.com: a site affiliated with the Trellix site authoring tool (but their advice applies even if you use other tools). Focus on writing for intranets and other utility-oriented sites.
• Article on Web Writing for Many Interest Levels.

Books

• Most practical book: The Yahoo! Style Guide — The Ultimate Sourcebook for Writing, Editing, and Creating Content For The Digital World, by Chris Barr (Europeans: order from Amazon.co.uk).
• Most thorough book: Letting Go of the Words: Writing Web Content that Works, by Janice (Ginny) Redish (Europeans: order from Amazon.co.uk).
• Faster read: Writing for the Web (4th edition), by Crawford Kilian (Europeans: order from Amazon.co.uk).
• Best summary: Writing for the Web (Chambers Desktop Guides) by Susannah Ross (only available in the U.K., but it's worth the extra shipping charges to get this book mailed to you from Amazon.co.uk, even if you're in the U.S. or otherwise far away from London.) Ross manages to cover all the most important issues in less space than anybody else, mainly because she focuses on writing, whereas Redish wanders all over many other issues in Web usability (that are important, but covered elsewhere).
• Specialized; about online news: Producing Online News: Digital Skills, Stronger Stories, by Ryan Thornburg (Europeans: order from Amazon.co.uk). Not just for newspaper sites and the like, but also relevant if you're writing the news area for a corporate site.

I am still looking for the perfect book, so if you do publish a book about Web-writing, send me a review copy and I may list it here if I find it better than these recommendations.

Much is known about how to write help text, online documentation, and other technical writing, and a good deal of the advice from these fields does transfer to writing for the Web. The main difference is that Web readers are much less motivated than readers of online docs since they can't know whether the site is relevant to their goals (in contrast, the docs are always relevant to using a product, even when the writing stinks).

Here are some good references on writing help and online documentation:

• Dynamics in Document Design: Creating Texts for Readers, by Karen A. Schriver. (Europeans: order from Amazon.co.uk)
  A great book about utilitarian writing, based on observations of people using a large variety of documents. Read Me First! A Style Guide for the Computer Industry (2nd edition, by Sun Microsystems' tech pubs group) (Europeans: order from Amazon.co.uk)
• Microsoft Manual of Style for Technical Publications (3rd edition, by Microsoft's tech pubs group) (Europeans: order from Amazon.co.uk).
  The official writing guidelines used by folks who write a lot of online docs.
• Designing Usable Electronic Text: Ergonomic Aspects of Human Information Usage, second edition, by Andrew Dillon. (Europeans: order from Amazon.co.uk)
  Not for the faint of heart: this is not a popular book; nor is it a how-to. It is a review of the research literature on online text and will save you weeks of time in the library (assuming that you want to know these basic research results in the first place).

See also my lists of recommended books about Web design and hypertext

Training in Web-Writing

Nielsen Norman Group can come to your organization and teach a full-day workshop on writing for the Web, with hands-on exercises for your team.

I'll present my newest findings about usability guidelines for websites, including content usability, in my tutorial on Fundamental Guidelines for Web Usability at the annual Usability Week conference.

The conference also contains a full-day tutorial on content usability and a tutorial on advanced content usability.

Also more specialized seminars on credibility and persuasive Web design and mobile user experience.