Writing For The Web Study Good writing still begets good reading. Style should be dictated by content. Usability studies suggest the inverted pyramid to facilitate scanners. But if writers are trying to entice reading, other styles must be explored. Experiments with writing on the Web involve many fiction sites, and fiction is not written in inverted pyramid style. The Web offers a chance to be as eclectic in writing styles as it is in its reading population. One size does not fit all! Here are some tips that can be used for any style of online writing: Write a discussion question first, whether you will use it or not. That will help you create your focus and insert a context that will relate to readers. You can move the discussion question to the end later. Write a
nut graph at the top of your story as a teaser. This will help you put your focus high in the story. This graph can be used as a tool and removed later if it doesn't serve as a subhead. Use short sentences. Avoid connecting sentences with conjunctions. Use short paragraphs. Write topic subheads. Use lists to help the reader scan the page. Write in chunks of information that can be split into logical subtopics and related nonlinear parts. If stories are presented on different Web pages, treat each chunk as a separate story like a sidebar. Restate the context. Use the blocking technique when possible, especially in a basic news story. If a story has three or more sources, try to structure the story so each source is in one block and does not have to be used again. See next point. Avoid the journalistic convention of using last-name only on second reference. When readers scroll different screens or click to another chunk on a separate Web page, the second reference is confusing. Ignore journalistic taboos of writing questions for leads or transitions. They work well on the Web, especially at the end of chunks. Try cliffhanger endings if the story will link to another screen.
Writing For The Web Study, Nielsen conducted three studies from 1994 to 1997 with fellow researcher John Morkes. "Our studies suggest that current Web writing often does not support users in achieving their main goal: to find useful information as quickly as possible," they wrote. "We have come to realize that content is king in the user's mind," they concluded. "When a page comes up, users focus their attention on the center of the window where they read the body text before they bother looking over header bars or other navigational elements." In their study, "How to write for the Web," conducted in 1997, they tested four models of writing. Promotional writing using adjectives and "marketese" found on many commercial sites concise text with half the word count of the promotional model scannable layout, using bullets objective language, eliminating adjectives.The concise text was the most popular, followed by the scannable model with bullets and then the objective language model. None of the test subjects chose the promotional writing model, which impaired credibility. Based on this study, Nielsen and Morkes suggest these techniques for
writing scannable text on the Web:
Highlighted keywords
Meaningful subheads (not clever ones)
Bulleted lists (They help scanners move through information.)
One idea per paragraph
Inverted pyramid style
Half the word count (or less) than conventional writing.
The last study was one of the first to test different writing styles, and its results are significant. But it must be viewed with caution for online news writing. The 41 users in the study were tested for their ease of searching for information, recall, and subjective satisfaction, not for reading news. The test only involved different versions of a story about travel attractions in Nebraska. And, as the researchers note, content is still a major factor in readability. Other news writing styles can be as effective, as this Poynter report will show.
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