Getting the words right - by Susannah Ross

Susannah Ross is the author of 'A Simple Guide to Writing for your Website' available from Amazon. In this guest feature, she addresses how writing for the web is different to writing for print and what you need to know to make your words work for you.

How does Web writing differ from writing for print?

With a book you can immediately see how big it is and what kind of book it is. You can be sure that the pages are organised by theme into chapters and are numbered in sequence. Using the index and thumbing through the pages at a rate of hundreds of words a second, you can find what you want quickly.

None of this true of a website. You can't tell at a glance whether a website includes four pages or four thousand pages. You have little idea what it is about or who wrote it. You have no idea how to find your way round it until you are told. The pages are not in sequence: you may follow links from one page to another and go round in circles or out of the site altogether. Using the computer screen, you can only read a few dozen words at a time and they are hard to read because the screen has poorer definition than the printed page. The chances are that you will not find what you are interested in.

When you read a printed page, you start with a better idea of what you are getting and feel more in control of the medium than you do with a webpage. As a writer on a website, you need to take account of this disorientation on the part of the user, the non-linear nature of a website and the inadequacies of the screen compared with paper. Make sure that you:

• explain yourself and your purpose clearly and repeatedly
• organise your information into discrete sections rather than in sequence
• write concisely and simply

What is the secret of successful Web writing?

You need to have three things clear in your mind -

• why you are writing
• who you are writing for
• what you are writing about

On the web, as everywhere else, good writing is the result of clear thinking.

So the first task is to be clear in your mind what your site is for. The more time you spend beforehand thinking about your purpose, eliminating anything that is not essential, and planning how you are going to organise your site to achieve it, the better your chance of expressing yourself clearly.

Then think who you are writing for. Plan your site according to the way you expect it to be used, not according to what you want to say. Put yourself in the position of the user at every stage, visualise that person and write with him or her in mind. As the web is interactive, your writing should be conversational; not necessarily familiar or casual, but direct and friendly. You are addressing a person. Whether you describe your business in the third person, or write in the first person as "we" or even "I", address the user directly as "you".

Thirdly, be sure you know what you are writing about. It is worth spending time digesting whatever information you have to put across before you write anything. Plan what you are going to say on each page and how those pages will relate to one another. The copy is not something you add in at the end, when the site is ready. Your business purpose and the way you express it informs the whole project.

The additional challenge of Web writing, as opposed to writing in linear media, is to achieve the utmost clarity and consistency. When your information is broken into chunks, some just a few words long, and put on different pages, the chance of confusion is greater and the effect of inconsistency even more jarring than in print or broadcast.

Here are some tips:

• keep your language simple
• make sure every word you use is necessary
• use the same terms to describe the same things throughout the site
• use the same spelling and punctuation for the same terms throughout
• ask for feedback and listen to it
• check, check and check again

March 2002

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