{"id":7,"date":"2005-02-14T10:33:21","date_gmt":"2005-02-14T15:33:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/2005\/writing-for-the-web-keep-it-short-keep-it-simple\/"},"modified":"2017-02-23T10:02:59","modified_gmt":"2017-02-23T15:02:59","slug":"writing-for-the-web-keep-it-short-keep-it-simple","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/2005\/writing-for-the-web-keep-it-short-keep-it-simple\/","title":{"rendered":"Writing for the web: Keep it short, keep it simple."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>In a nutshell: <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>When people surf the web, they have no time or patience to read long blocks of text &#8211; <strong>keep your writing simple and short.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Some basic tips:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Use bullets to emphasize major points.<\/li>\n<li>Keep paragraphs about 7-10 words wide.<\/li>\n<li>Use lots of white space &#8211; give your pages lots of &#8216;breathing room&#8217;.<\/li>\n<li>Don&#8217;t do stupid things like having paragraphs that are all in italics or all bold.<\/li>\n<li>Make sure your text color is easy to read. <strong>For example: <\/strong>dark blue text on a black background is hard to read!<\/li>\n<li>Keep your text alignments consistent: don&#8217;t center align titles on one page, and then shove your titles to the left on another.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Basic writing tips:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Keep sentences short and again, to the point. <strong>Tip:<\/strong> remove unnecessary words.<\/li>\n<li>Write as you would speak. <em>This could be a problem if you&#8217;re a babbling fool &#8230;<\/em> \ud83d\ude42<\/li>\n<li>Read over what you have written 3 times.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&#8211; &#8211;<\/p>\n<p>I can recommend three great books on writing well:<\/p>\n<p><strong>Writing in Bullets: <em>by Kim Long <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http:\/\/rcm.amazon.com\/e\/cm?t=wwwmontrealma-20&#038;o=1&#038;p=8&#038;l=as1&#038;asins=0762415975&#038;fc1=000000&#038;=1&#038;lc1=0000ff&#038;bc1=000000&#038;lt1=_blank&#038;IS2=1&#038;bg1=ffffff&#038;f=ifr\" style=\"width:120px;height:240px;\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>A good little book that will teach you how to use bullets effectively &#8211; there&#8217;s more to it than you think.<\/p>\n<p><strong>On Writing Well: <em>by William Zinsser <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http:\/\/rcm.amazon.com\/e\/cm?t=wwwmontrealma-20&#038;o=1&#038;p=8&#038;l=as1&#038;asins=0060006641&#038;fc1=000000&#038;=1&#038;lc1=0000ff&#038;bc1=000000&#038;lt1=_blank&#038;IS2=1&#038;bg1=ffffff&#038;f=ifr\" style=\"width:120px;height:240px;\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>A classic book on the subject. Not so specialized as Writing in Bullets, it tackles writing from a global perspective.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Elements of Style: <em>by William Strunk Jr<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http:\/\/rcm.amazon.com\/e\/cm?t=wwwmontrealma-20&#038;o=1&#038;p=8&#038;l=as1&#038;asins=020530902X&#038;fc1=000000&#038;=1&#038;lc1=0000ff&#038;bc1=000000&#038;lt1=_blank&#038;IS2=1&#038;bg1=ffffff&#038;f=ifr\" style=\"width:120px;height:240px;\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Another classic. This book gets into the details of writing where you learn about things like:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Form<\/li>\n<li>Commonly misused words and expressions<\/li>\n<li>Basic rules of composition<\/li>\n<li>And plain old good advice like: omit needless words<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Sometimes it can be a little dry, but the book is packed full of great stuff &#8211; get it! Actually, you should get all these books &#8211; it&#8217;s not like they&#8217;re expensive!<\/p>\n<p>CIAO,<\/p>\n<p>Stefan Mischook<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a nutshell: When people surf the web, they have no time or patience to read long blocks of text &#8211; keep your writing simple and short. Some basic tips: Use bullets to emphasize major points. Keep paragraphs about 7-10 words wide. Use lots of white space &#8211; give your pages lots of &#8216;breathing room&#8217;. &hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4733,"href":"https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7\/revisions\/4733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.killersites.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}