Download Sources - Association for Progressive Communications

Writing content for the web
Developed by
Marion Walton, Multimedia Education Group,
University of Cape Town
On behalf of the Association for Progressive Communications
March 2002
[email protected]
http://www.writing.uct.ac.za/
http://www.writing.uct.ac.za/visual/
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APC Strategic Use and Capacity Building Projects
APC.org - The International Internet Community for Environment, Human Rights, Development and Peace
ItrainOnline: http://www.itrainonline.org/
From page to screen – input
New reading behaviour has given rise to new writing strategies for the web, including
hypertextual overview and orienting devices and a diverse range of techniques for
enhancing 'information scent'. These and other information design conventions have
evolved along with design guidelines and 'rules of thumb' which take the unique
qualities of the web into account (for example, the guidelines by Jakob Nielsen, Jared
Spool, and Steve Krug).
There are important differences between the web and other media, particularly in
relation to the significant shift from an audience of readers to an audience of users.
1. How people read differently - skimming and scanning, combined with depth reading
2. How people read differently - navigation
3. How people read differently - searching
4. How people read layout on the web
5. How people read - Issues specific to South Africa
Writing strategies – workshop
Navigational rhetoric
Websites need to provide people with orienting information or "navigational rhetoric" to
help them make decisions about where to go on the web.
Textual features which support the non-linear navigational rhetoric of hypertext are
important because they provide the user with information about where they are going,
where they are, and how their present position fits into the bigger scheme of things on
the site.
Departure information - clear and informative wording of links, link titles, and kickers.
This information is particularly important given the web's characteristically long waits
for pages to download. Clear departure information helps people decide whether or not
clicking on a particular link will be worth their while.
Arrival information - Page titling and headings. Once people have clicked on a link
and the page has downloaded, they need to know that they have indeed made the
correct decision.
Orientation information - Devices to represent site hierarchy, ways of showing "you
are here" Fisheye views are relatively successful, breadcrumbs relatively unsuccessful.
Strategies from print
Good websites are based on writing strategies developed in print:
Several techniques have been adapted from print to heighten information scent on the
web. These include lead-in paragraphs, the inverted pyramid style, taglines attached to
site logos which explain the function of the site, and short 'kickers' which add
descriptive information to links.
All these techniques involve using succinct summaries of information to provide users
with an overview of available information, so that they have enough information at their
disposal to identify and click-through to the items they need. Pull-quotes and captions
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APC Strategic Use and Capacity Building Projects
APC.org - The International Internet Community for Environment, Human Rights, Development and Peace
ItrainOnline: http://www.itrainonline.org/
assist scanning readers to get a more detailed and livelier gist of lengthier pieces of
text without requiring them to read entire documents.
Inverted pyramids and writing for the web
Academic writing is conventionally written using a pyramid structure which forces the
reader to work through a lengthy argument before reaching a conclusion. This
structure of writing can be envisaged using the diagram on the left, or a Pyramid
structure.
Fig 1: The traditional structure of an academic article
Fig 2: The traditional structure of a journalistic article
The structure of a journalistic article is rather different, presenting all the most
important information in the first or lead paragraph. This structure is specifically
designed for skimming readers, and can be visualised using the diagram on the right,
often referred to as an "Inverted Pyramid".
Given the way we read on the web, web design has come to rely heavily on the
journalistic inverted pyramid, with the addition of hyperlinks, as illustrated below.
Fig 3: The evolving structure of a web article
The major difference between
journalistic style and web style is that
traditionally witty journalistic titles and
'teasing' kickers are particularly
unsuccessful on the web, where a
heavily informative style is more likely to
assist web users to make the decisions
required when navigating.
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APC Strategic Use and Capacity Building Projects
APC.org - The International Internet Community for Environment, Human Rights, Development and Peace
ItrainOnline: http://www.itrainonline.org/
Writing microcontent
The key difference between writing for print and writing for websites is the way certain
snippets of text or "microcontent" are dispersed throughout the web through
databases, search engines, remote links and navigational hierarchies. This
'microcontent' needs to be written robustly so the snippets can communicate clearly
even when read out of the context of the site as a whole. Microcontent is extremely
powerful in relation to the user experience. Microcontent items should be written with
an eye to representing information remotely, and include headings, and, in particular,
titles.
Owing to the structural nature of html, page titles take on a life of their own. They are
usually read out of context, representing the page in diverse places, such as history
lists, search engine results, and user bookmarks.
Meta tags play a similar role, although less visible to human readers, they are highly
visible to some search engines. URLs play a similar role, and are often more visible
than their unwitting authors ever intended them to be. Text links and any navigational
text has a similar dispersed role in that they 'stand in for' information elsewhere navigational links are often labelling systems in their own right, and need to
communicate succinctly what is available in the other parts of a site. Text links need to
communicate in one context what can be found on a linked page - a very different
context, and possibly on a different site entirely. This makes navigational text and other
links extremely difficult to write, and they are often supported by short kickers, lead-in
paragraphs or, less frequently, popup link titles.
Strategies to assist scanning readers
Key techniques for heightening information scent within a site relate to developing
scannable content. This begins with the process of 'chunking' information to develop
the information architecture. Most information on the web benefits from presentation in
the form of concise, usually non-linear 'chunks', organised into a logical structure which
is easily comprehensible to the target group of users. Longer textual units, whether
sites or long documents within sites also often utilise a linked version of the inverted
pyramid to provide a coherent 'but easily scannable 'map' of the available information.
Selecting words for text links also plays a key role in scanning, as these links have
higher visual salience than surrounding text.
Writing for Information communities: New web genres - weblogs, and slashdots, or
participatory news
Some innovative and fascinating ways of using new media entirely redefine the
traditional roles of the writer and the audience. For example, weblogs (similar to an
online journal) allow authors to collect and bounce ideas for stories off their audience,
as the ideas unfold. This genre can allow the audience to become co-authors, and
influence the eventual unfolding of the story. Perhaps the most successful example of
the merging of weblog and community newsgroup are participatory news sites such as
slashdot, which are similar in philosophy to the peer to peer networking applications
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APC Strategic Use and Capacity Building Projects
APC.org - The International Internet Community for Environment, Human Rights, Development and Peace
ItrainOnline: http://www.itrainonline.org/
which are the web's runaway successes (e.g. Napster worked in this way to allow for
sharing pirated music files).
In the case of participatory news sites such as Slashdot, the discussion and the linked
contributions of the audience are equally as important as the original article. We can
represent the structure ofa Slashdot story in the following way:
Fig 3: Community sites such as Slashdot incorporate extensive discussion and further linking to a web article
Sources
Geeklog
http://geeklog.sourceforge.net/staticpages/index.php?page=20020114085755339
Slashdot http://slashdot.org
Blogger http://www.blogger.com/
Usability and Writing for the web
Lauren Shantall 2001. Whence the write stuff? [Discussion of e-books and people's
reading habits] Mail and Guardian February 26,
Available http://www.mg.co.za/mg/za/archive/2001feb/features/26febwrite.html Accessed 02/03/2001
Krug, Steve. 2000. Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web
Usability. Indianapolis: Que Macmillan
Nielsen, Jakob. 1994. Report From a 1994 Web Usability Study Available
http://www.useit.com/papers/1994_web_usability_report.html
Nielsen, Jakob, 1997. Writing for the Web Available
http://www.useit.com/papers/webwriting/
Jakob Nielsen October 1997 Alertbox column "How users read on the web" Available
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9710a.html
Nielsen, Jakob. March 15, 1997: 'Be Succinct! (Writing for the Web)' Alertbox.
Available http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9703b.html
Nielsen, Jakob September 6, 1998. 'Microcontent: How to Write Headlines, Page
Titles, and Subject Lines' Alertbox. Available
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/980906.html
Nielsen, Jakob. May 14, 2000 Eyetracking Study of Web Readers Alertbox,
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20000514.html
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APC Strategic Use and Capacity Building Projects
APC.org - The International Internet Community for Environment, Human Rights, Development and Peace
ItrainOnline: http://www.itrainonline.org/
Nielsen, Jakob. 2000a. Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity.
Indianapolis: New Riders Publishing. pp. 98 – 160.
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20000514.html
Nielsen discussion of Poynter
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20000514.html
Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, October 1, 2000: 'Content Creation for Average People'
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20001001.html
Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox July 22 2001 'Tagline Blues'
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20010722.html
Poynter Institute: Project report site http://www.poynter.org/eyetrack2000/
Editor & Publisher: Eyetrack Online News Study May Surprise You
http://www.mediainfo.com/ephome/news/newshtm/stop/st050300.htm
WIRED News: Online News All About Text
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,36104,00.html
New York Times: A High-Tech Vision Lifts Fidelity
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/17/technology/17FIDO.html
Schroeder, Will. Testing Web Sites with Eye-Tracking User Interface Engineering
http://world.std.com/~uieweb/eyetrack1.htm
Andrew Bonime & Ken C. Pohlmann. 1998. Writing for New Media: The Essential
Guide to Writing for Interactive Media, Cd-Rom, and the Web. John Wiley and Sons.
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APC Strategic Use and Capacity Building Projects
APC.org - The International Internet Community for Environment, Human Rights, Development and Peace
ItrainOnline: http://www.itrainonline.org/