12 Useful Tips for Online Writing

Posted on October 3rd, 2007 in Online Writing by Hendrik
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Online writing and publish is the new culture. However, there is a difference between traditional writing and writing on the net.
  1. Write for visitor control: Understand that the Web visitor wants to control the reading experience. You must make it easy for them to read only what they want by making your writing concise and your main ideas easy to find. Do not force the detail on them.
  2. Say it once, quickly: People don’t like to read online. Make sure your sentences are direct and short. Eliminate all redundancy and paragraph transitions. Eliminate all unnecessary words and phrases. Use bulleted lists. Write for quick comprehension.
  3. Design for scanning: Online visitors scan for the information they need. Visitors use headings, graphics, and colored or bolded text to find what they need.
  4. Write in short chunks: Write in short chunks of no more than four or five sentences. Visually these chunks (paragraphs) should give the feeling of being short and to the point. Include only one topic in each chunk.
  5. Create clear concise labels for text chunks: Make sure that each heading or label for each chunk is short and clear. It must accurately represent the content of that chunk.
  6. Use an active writing style: Write directly to your visitors by using the second person. Use the present tense-it is shorter and more direct. Avoid the passive voice. The active voice creates shorter sentences, is easier to comprehend quickly, and names responsibility.
  7. Do not use underlining: Most browsers are set to automatically underline links. This is an important text attribute as it provides a cue to visitors who may be color-blind. If you use underlining with text that is not a link it may confuse a color-blind visitor. In addition, it is harder to read underlined text online.
  8. Use Italics with care: Use it for book titles. Avoid Italics for blocks of text because it is very difficult to read online.
  9. Use bold text for emphasis only: Bold text is a cue that something is more important than the surrounding text. If you bold all your text you lose this valuable cue. If you feel you need to bold text to make it stand out on a background, consider changing the background.
  10. Avoid patterned backgrounds: Patterned backgrounds can distract the visitor and interfere with the visitor’s ability to read the text. Keep any patterns very light and conduct usability tests to make sure they do not make your pages difficult for your visitors.
  11. Avoid watermarked text: Using text as a watermark pattern behind your content can seriously impact the readability of your pages. You can minimize this by spacing the watermarks out and placing them at an angle, but they still compete with the text for attention.
  12. Limit the use of bullets: Bullets in online documents create unnecessary visual noise. Unlike paper documents, consider not using bullets, such as circles or diamonds, etc. Use white space instead.
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