Writing For The Web

Elmore Leonard has 10 rules for writing fiction. Number 10 should be applied to all writing for the web:

Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip. Think of what you skip reading a novel: thick paragraphs of prose you can see have too many words in them.

Jakob Nielsen has been telling us for years how people read on the web - they don’t. People scan text on web pages, picking out words, phrases and sentences.

Last week I was rereading Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think! and his advice on writing for the web is “get rid of half the words on each page, then get rid of half of what’s left.”

Are you writing for the web? Just remember that less is more. Omit needless words.

Posted in Web at 9:30 PM