Writing for the web
Today I'm planning to talk about some of Jakob Nielsen's ideas about how users read web pages. He argues that, because web readers don't read screen text in the same way they do printed matter, when you work online you need to change the way you write and the way you format the resulting prose.
Nielsen developed his ideas in the early days of the web - you can still read some of his original essays about web writing - e.g. How Users Read on the Web (there's a longer version of this online, if you want more detail), Microcontent - How to write Headlines, Page Titles and Subject Lines and Inverted Pyramids in Cyberspace.
Nielsen's guidelines are very much a product of the time (the mid-nineties) when they were written. They also reflect the fact that he's more of a usability expert/designer than a writer. He's adapted them slightly since the late 90s, but not that much. I'll try to hand out a photocopy of a section from his latest book, Prioritizing Web Usability, which came out last year.
Nielsen's ideas have been very influential. Many big online sites follow his advice on producing brief, 'scannable' text. You will need to know about this if you end up working for one of the big online news/media organisations.
Other people have approached writing online more from a writer's perspective. For a slightly alternative take, try Crawford Kilian's Effective Web Writing. Kilian's piece is much more discursive - more like a standard piece of print prose. Nielsen might argue that Kilian should have broken it down, edited it, chunked it, added headings and bullet points to make it more scannable and web-friendly. What do you think?
Interesting point! The article originally appeared in a print journal, which them uploaded it (in classic shovelware style) to its own website.
If I were to revise the piece for readers on the web, I would indeed cut, chunk, and subhead it extensively.
Posted by: Crawford Kilian | October 18, 2007 at 06:12 PM