Writing Guide

The look and feel of your web site will give an immediate impression to the visitor, but the layout and contents of your articles will also contribute to the appearance and usefulness of each page. As an editor, the page contents are your responsibility. 

Reading web pages

Web pages are read differently from books or magazines, largely because people visit a web site with a specific purpose in mind. Your site visitors are trying to acquire facts, and your layout and content should aid them in this. 

Research into how users read web pages has provided the following findings:

• Visitors scan web pages, trying to pick out a few sentences or even fragments of sentences to get the information they want.
• Visitors do not like long, scrolling pages: they prefer the text to be short and to the point.
• Visitors prefer factual information to marketing fluff or overly hyped language.

Writing for the Web

The three factors to bear in mind when writing web pages are therefore to keep the text concise, scannable and objective:

Concise - cutting out content is difficult as a balance has to be struck between keeping useful information and making the page fast and easy to read. Large amounts of text will deter a user from reading and long scrolling pages are particularly unappealing, so overly detailed information may need to be cut. If more detail is useful then this can be provided through a link to a separate article so users can choose to investigate further. 

Scannable - users don't read web pages, they scan them, so it is important to summarise and call attention to important pieces of text. Section summaries are useful, as are layout devices such as bullets or numbered lists, bold text, additional headings, and short paragraphs.

Objective - Remove unnecessary words (like repeated use of "great") along with buzzwords such as "paradigm" - often they do not convey useful information but add to the length of the text.

Consider your readers

It is important to remember your target audience when writing content. Articles in the About Us section of the web page will be read by those who are finding out about your organization for the first time, so do not make assumptions as to what they do or do not know. Conversely, articles that are aimed towards your membership should not patronise their intelligence.