Content and writing for the web
"Write the way an architect builds, who first drafts his plan and designs every detail."
Schopenhaur
"Simple English is no one's mother tongues. It has to be worked for."
Jacques Barzun
"Of all the barriers to change - and to realizing the benefits of plain language - none is greater than the myth that clarity has to be sacrificed for precision, especially with complex subjects. Don't believe it. The murkiness that plagues so much official and legal prose is usually generated by the writer, not by the substance. It comes more from bad style than from the inherent difficulty of the subject."
Richard Kimble, Writing for Dollars, Writing to Please
"There are three general stages in the writing process... Some people believe that the only stage that really counts is the second--writiing. This isn't so. You need thoughtful prewriting to develop something worth writing about. And you need careful rewriting to develop something worth reading."
John B Karls and Ronald Szymansky, The Writer's Handbook, 2nd edition, p. 100.
"Good writing doesn't just happen--at least not very often. Good writing is planned."
John B Karls and Ronald Szymansky, The Writer's Handbook, 2nd edition, p. 101.
"Organizations are flooded with content, but that content doesn't become information and information doesn't turn into knowledge unless someone knows it's there, can get to it with minimal pain, and can repurpose it by creating new information from existing content."
JoAnn T Hackos, Content Management for Dynamic Web Delivery, p. 7.
"Content management is not about tools or technology, though both play an important role."
JoAnn T Hackos, Content Management for Dynamic Web Delivery, p. 8.
"Having the right content in place, keeping it up-to-date, and removing content that is no longer relevant or timely ensures that the user community will find what they need."
JoAnn T Hackos, Content Management for Dynamic Web Delivery, p. 33.
"Just because information exists does that mean that someone, somewhere, finds it useful "
JoAnn T Hackos, Content Management for Dynamic Web Delivery, p. 38.
"Too often, publishing to an enterprise-wide intranet or a business-related Internet site means little more than capturing facsimile copies in PDF of existing legacy print documents."
JoAnn T Hackos, Content Management for Dynamic Web Delivery, p. 101.
"Web sites, intranets and extranets that contain only facsimiles of existing print documents don't get used as much as they might be, simply because they are cumbersome."
JoAnn T Hackos, Content Management for Dynamic Web Delivery, p. 101.
"When formerly inaccessible and unusable content is published on the web, it becomes even less usable."
JoAnn T Hackos, Content Management for Dynamic Web Delivery, p. .
"Far too often, given the demains of fast-paced corporate life, information is being thrown into an online tool for use on the web, a company intranet, or in online help without regard for the basics of good information design--is the information accessible and usable?"
JoAnn T Hackos and Dawn M Stevens, Standards for Online Communication, p. xi.
"Too often... when planning to deliver information electronically, organisations ignore some or all of the analysis required for success. Instead, they focus on the dissemination of the information they have at hand, rather than what is needed by the user community."
JoAnn T Hackos and Dawn M Stevens, Standards for Online Communication, p. xi.
"Your primary goal, no matter what trade-offs you face, should always be to meet your users' needs first. The structure of your internal departments, the sources of information, the ways you categories your users or even the convenience of updating should never override a choice to support how your users think about information."
JoAnn T Hackos and Dawn M Stevens, Standards for Online Communication, p. 79.
"The best access and navigation methods that you provide in your information design are of little use if the information your users finally find is unintelligible to them."
JoAnn T Hackos and Dawn M Stevens, Standards for Online Communication, p. 79.
"Only with direct user feedback through usability studies will you ensure that the text you write is readable and ultimately usable."
JoAnn T Hackos and Dawn M Stevens, Standards for Online Communication, p. 79.
"Good web text has a lot in common with good print text. It's plain, concise, concrete and 'transparent': even on a personal site the text shouldn't draw attention to itself, only to its subject"
Crawford Kilian, Writing for the Web, p. xvi.
"If readers must puzzle over unfamiliar or ambiguous words, you are making them work harder than they need to."
Crawford Kilian, Writing for the Web, p. 13.
"Every sentence, every phrase, every word has to fight for its life."
Crawford Kilian, Writing for the Web, pp. 58-9.
"The thing to do, of course, is to find out what people know and what they don't know, and then to write accordingly."
Rudolph Flesch, The Art of Readable Writing, p. 30.
"There's hardly anything more important for readable writing: the more you know about the kind of person you are writing for, the better you'll write."
Rudolph Flesch, The Art of Readable Writing, p. 31.
"Say what you have to say, and then stop."
Rudolph Flesch, The Art of Readable Writing, p. 63.
"Any style that I have... insists of two principles: use the fewest words possible; use the simplest words possible."
Rudolph Flesch, The Art of Readable Writing, pp. 106-7.
"A writer must know how people read, what are the main sources of reading errors, and what can be done to possibly forestall them."
Rudolph Flesch, The Art of Readable Writing, p. 183.
"Easy reading is difficult to write. In fact, it seems to be so difficult that most people would rather try anything else but write when they face a job of simple explanation. They escape from words into pictures, symbols, graphs, charts - anything at all as long as it's 'visual'."
Rudolph Flesch, The Art of Readable Writing, p. 193.
"Have you heard the expression 'killing people with kindness'? Well, governments, for laudable motives, are killing people with information. Many countries are initiating Freedom of Information acts, when what we really need are Freedom FROM Information acts."
Gerry McGovern, New Thinking
"Universities... are growing websites like mushrooms, and have an amazing capacity to publish large quantities of irrelevant and confusing content."
Gerry McGovern, New Thinking
"In a world dominated by information, publishing skills are no longer something that's nice to have. They are a must-have."
Gerry McGovern and Rob Norton, Content Critical, p. 4.
"Every day 7 million new documents are published on the Web, where there are already more than 550 billion."
Gerry McGovern and Rob Norton, Content Critical, p. 5.
"The Web is like the Trojan Horse of information overload. It promised information nirvana and delivered overload hell ."
Gerry McGovern and Rob Norton, Content Critical, p. 5.
"A modern manager would never let their factory floor get in the state they let their websites get into... few people realise the true value or cost of content."
Gerry McGovern and Rob Norton, Content Critical, p. 6.
"Publishing is about quality control. You will reject far more than you will publish."
Gerry McGovern and Rob Norton, Content Critical, p. 7.
"In publishing, less is invariably more. Critical content is precise and to the point. In this information overloaded world there has never been a greater case to keep it short, simple and snappy."
Gerry McGovern and Rob Norton, Content Critical, p. 7.
"The key difference between commerce and e-commerce is that commerce is selling with people and e-commerce is selling with content."
Gerry McGovern and Rob Norton, Content Critical, p. 12.
"The dirty little secret of the web is that the majority of content published ranges from poor to downright awful."
Gerry McGovern and Rob Norton, Content Critical, p. 31.
"The Internet can support more efficient publishing processes. But it's the classic 'garbage in, garbage out' mantra; no amount of clever processes will turn poor writing into good writing. The 550 billion-plus documents on intranets, extranets and Internet websites today merely inform us of how many awful publishers there are."
Gerry McGovern and Rob Norton, Content Critical, p. 32.
"The benefits and costs of content are difficult to measure precisely. That does not mean that they cannot be measured. In fact it is vital to establish a cost-benefit model for content, otherwise it will be managed in an ad hoc manner."
Gerry McGovern and Rob Norton, Content Critical, p. 34.
"Content is critical to the modern organization. It is how the organization increasingly communicates and derives value from its intellectual capital. However content is poorly understood, measured and managed within organizations today."
Gerry McGovern and Rob Norton, Content Critical, p. .
"It's a strange and fascinating thing how easily content gets disassociated from its reader. There are billions of documents on the Internet today. A great many of them were not written with a reader in mind. They are boring, too long, verbose, incoherent, misleading, out-of-date, unreadable."
Gerry McGovern and Rob Norton, Content Critical, p. 45.
"Publishing skills are far more important than publishing technology. It would be better to have 500 words of the right content handwritten on scrap paper, delivered by snail mail, than to have 5,000 words of waffle sent by high-speed wireless to your mobile phone."
Gerry McGovern and Rob Norton, Content Critical, p. 46.
"People are under a lot of pressure today. We live in the age of information overload. Whether reading on the Web or in a newspaper, the average reader doesn't have the time for content that doesn't get to the point."
Gerry McGovern and Rob Norton, Content Critical, p. 48.
"Your readers are in a hurry. The most precious commodity to them is their time. When they come to your website looking for content, they want to find it as quickly as possible. The longer it takes them to find what they are looking for the more dissatisfied they become."
Gerry McGovern and Rob Norton, Content Critical, p. 50.
"Publishing is as much about what you don't publish as what you do."
Gerry McGovern and Rob Norton, Content Critical, p. 53.
"Don't publish content just because you have it. Only publish content that is relevant."
Gerry McGovern and Rob Norton, Content Critical, p. 55.
"Do not believe the reader is dying to interact with the organization and will do so at every opportunity. A wll-designed website will minimize the amount of unnecessary interaction by having content that answers reader's questions."
Gerry McGovern and Rob Norton, Content Critical, p. 58.
"If you want great content that is well written so that it can be easily understood, you have to pay for it."
Gerry McGovern and Rob Norton, Content Critical, p. 97.
"If workers are aware that creating quailty content is an essential skill, they are more likely to want to learn how to become better at it."
Gerry McGovern and Rob Norton, Content Critical, p. 97.
"Quantity is often the enemy of quality publishing. Less is invariably more."
Gerry McGovern and Rob Norton, Content Critical, p. 111.
"Editing is about making sure that the good stuff gets published and the poor stuff doesn't. It's about making sure that what is published reflects the publication scope, the key messages, the agreed style and tone, etc. Good editing makes for a good publication. Poor editing makes for a bad one."
Gerry McGovern and Rob Norton, Content Critical, p. 111.
"Much web content is poorly edited, and as a result the Web is seen by a great many people as an environment of inferior content."
Gerry McGovern and Rob Norton, Content Critical, p. 111.
"Even the best writer needs an editor. Good editing is what sets the best publications apart from the rest."
Gerry McGovern and Rob Norton, Content Critical, p. 122.
"Most headings and summaries you find on the Internet are poor. Headings often give you very little clue as to what the document is actually about. Summaries tend to grab whatever 30 words they can find, regardless of whether they 'summarize' the document or not."
Gerry McGovern and Rob Norton, Content Critical, p. 173.
"If an online publication wishes to increase the chances that its readers will 'click for more' it needs to focus on improving the heading and summary writing skills of its authors."
Gerry McGovern and Rob Norton, Content Critical, p. 173.
"Get rid of half the words on each page, then get rid of half of what's left."
Steve Krug, Don't Make Me Think, p. 45.
"Promotional language imposes a cognitive burden on users who have to spend resources on filtering out the hyperbole to get at the facts."
Jakob Nielsen, "Reading on the web", Alertbox
"However seductive the present might be, writing for the Web is writing for the ages, not just for the moment. (People who post stream-of-consciousness entries in their weblogs, for example, might want to consider that they're also writing for managers who might hire them in twenty years.)"
Jakob Nielsen, "Durability of usability guidelines", Alertbox
"The medium is not the message; the message is the message."
Jakob Nielsen, "Top Ten Mistakes of Web Management", Alertbox
"Web pages should be dominated by content of interest to the user."
Jakob Nielsen, Designing Web Usability, p. 18.
"As a rule of thumb, content should account for at least half of a page's design, and preferably closer to 80 percent."
Jakob Nielsen, Designing Web Usability, p. 22.
"... the secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components. Every word that servces no function, every long word that could be a short word, every adverb that carries the same meaning that's already in the verb, every passive construction that leaves the reader unsure of who is doing what--these are the thousand and one adulterants that weaken the strength of a sentence."
William Zinsser, On Writing Well, pp. 7-8.
"It won't do to say the reader is too dumb or too lazy to keep pace with the train of thought. If the reader is lost, it's usually because the writer hasn't been careful enough."
William Zinsser, On Writing Well, p. 9.
"Faced with... obstacles, readers are at first tenacious. They blame themselves--they obviously missed something, and they go back over the mystifying sentence, or over the whole paragraph, piecing it out like an ancient rune, making guesses and moving on. But they won't do that for long. The writer is making them work too hard, and they will look for one who is better at the craft."
William Zinsser, On Writing Well, p. 12.
"Writers must... constantly ask: what I am trying to say? Surprisingly often they don't know."
William Zinsser, On Writing Well, p. 12.
"Examine every word you put on paper. You'll find a surprising number that don't serve any purpose ."
William Zinsser, On Writing Well, p. 13.
"Beware of all the slippery new fad words: paradigm and parametre, prioritise and potentialise. They are all weeds that will smother what you write. Don't dialogue with someone you can talk to. Don't interface with anybody."
William Zinsser, On Writing Well, p. 16.
"The reader will notice if you are putting on airs. Readers want the person who is talking to them to sound genuine."
William Zinsser, On Writing Well, p. 20.
"Credibility is just as fragile for a writer as for a President. Don't inflate an incident to make it more outlandish than it actually was. If the reader catches you in just one bogus statement that you are trying to pass off as true, everything you write thereafter will be suspect. It's too great a risk, and not worth taking."
William Zinsser, On Writing Well, p. 78.
"Keep your paragraphs short. Writing is visual--it catches they eye before it has a chance to catch the brain."
William Zinsser, On Writing Well, p. 80.
"Short paragraphs put air around what you write and make it look inviting, whereas a long chunk of type can discourage a reader from even starting to read."
William Zinsser, On Writing Well, p. 80.
"Just because people work for an institution, they don't have to write like one. Institutions can be warmed up. Administrators can be turned into human beings. Information can be imparted clearly and without pomposity."
William Zinsser, On Writing Well, p. 167.
"The more you know about your visitors, the better you can write for them."
Johnathon and Lisa Price, Hot Text: Web Writing that Works, p. 5.
"People understand some words faster and more accurately than others. Interestingly, if you pick short words... words most people can easily pronounce, and words that are used a lot, people will understand you. The fewer syllables, the higher the impact."
Johnathon and Lisa Price, Hot Text: Web Writing that Works, p. 92.
"If you routinely describe your company with adjectives such as premier, top-rated, and world-class, you need to calm down. Let the facts speak for you. You don't need to give up your enthusiasm, just your adjectives and adverbs."
Johnathon and Lisa Price, Hot Text: Web Writing that Works, p. 96.
"If I could teach only one key to great writing, it would be this: make every word count."
Stephen Wilbers, Keys to Great Writing, p. 11.
"Whenever we can say in a word what it took us six words to say in our first draft, we have probably improved our copy."
Stephen Wilbers, Keys to Great Writing, p. 13.
"Word writers tend to be people who don't trust a word to do its work."
Stephen Wilbers, Keys to Great Writing, p. 13.
"Unless you have a good reason for using a fancy word, use a plain one."
Stephen Wilbers, Keys to Great Writing, p. 45.
"Avoid language that seems stilted or unnecessarily formal in favour of language that sounds natural and genuine to your ear."
Stephen Wilbers, Keys to Great Writing, p. 45.
"Your goal as a writer is to connect with your reader, not to create distance through artificial-sounding language."
Stephen Wilbers, Keys to Great Writing, p. 124.