Letting Go of the Words

Author： Redish, Janice (Ginny)

Publishers： Elsevier Science

Publishing year： 2012

ISBN： 9780123859310

Subject： [TP 自动化技术、计算机技术]

Language： ENG

Introduction

Web site design and development continues to become more sophisticated. An important part of this maturity originates with well-laid-out and well-written content. Ginny Redish is a world-renowned expert on information design and how to produce clear writing in plain language for the web. All of the invaluable information that she shared in the first edition is included with numerous new examples. New information on content strategy for web sites, search engine optimization (SEO), and social media make this once again the only book you need to own to optimize your writing for the web.

  • New material on content strategy, search engine optimization, and social media
  • Lots of new and updated examples
  • More emphasis on new hardware like tablets, iPads, and iPhones

Chapter

  • Front Cover

  • Praise for Letting Go of the Words

  • Letting Go of the Words

  • Copyright

  • Dedication

  • Contents

  • Foreword

  • Acknowledgments

  • Introducing Letting Go of the Words

  • What’s new?

  • What’s the book like?

  • Letting Go is about writing and design, not technology

  • Letting Go includes many examples

  • Letting Go reflects user-experience design

  • You can jump around in the book

  • Let’s continue to converse

  • 1 Content! Content! Content!

  • People come for the content

  • Content = conversation

  • Web = phone, not file cabinet

  • Online, people skim and scan

  • People do read online – sometimes

  • People don’t read more because …

  • Writing well = having successful conversations

  • Answer your site visitors’ questions

  • Let your site visitors “grab and go”

  • Encourage further use

  • Market successfully to your site visitors

  • Improve search engine optimization (SEO)

  • Improve internal search

  • Be accessible to all

  • Three case studies

  • Case Study 1-1: Conversing well with words

  • Case Study 1-2: Conversing well with few words

  • Case Study 1-3: Revising web words

  • Summarizing Chapter 1

  • 2 Planning: Purposes, Personas, Conversations

  • Why? Know what you want to achieve

  • Focus on what you want your site visitors to do

  • Be specific

  • Think of SEO

  • Think of universal usability

  • Know your purposes for everything you write

  • Who? What’s the conversation?

  • We all interpret as we read

  • You can find out lots about your site visitors

  • 1. Gather information about your site visitors

  • 2. List groups of site visitors

  • 3. List major characteristics for each group

  • Key phrases or quotes

  • Experience, expertise

  • Emotions

  • Values

  • Technology

  • Social and cultural environments and language (“context of use”)

  • Demographics

  • 4. Understand the conversations they want to start

  • Don’t translate

  • Analyze site searches

  • Breathing life into your data with personas

  • What is a persona?

  • What makes up a persona?

  • Picture and name

  • Demographics

  • Quotes, values, stories, tasks, and more

  • How many personas?

  • How do personas work with a web team?

  • Breathing life into your data with scenarios

  • How long? How many?

  • Scenarios for whom?

  • How do scenarios relate to content?

  • Summarizing Chapter 2

  • Interlude 1 Content Strategy

  • Why is content strategy so important?

  • What is content strategy?

  • Content strategy is about governance

  • Content strategy is about messages, media, style, and tone

  • Content strategy is about people, processes, and technology

  • Content strategy is about purposes, personas, and scenarios

  • Content strategy supports and carries out business strategy

  • What does content strategy cover?

  • Content strategy includes all communication channels

  • Social media strategy is part of content strategy

  • Who does content strategy?

  • Seven steps to carry out a content strategy

  • 1. Inventory the current content

  • 2. Decide on messages, media, style, and tone

  • 3. Start an organic style guide – anduse it

  • 4. Create workable designs that focus on content

  • 5. Audit the current content – and act on the audit

  • 6. Test the strategy

  • 7. Plan for the future

  • 3 Designing for Easy Use

  • Who should read this chapter – and why?

  • Integrate content and design from the beginning

  • Answer content and design questions together

  • Use real content throughout the process

  • Build in flexibility for universal usability

  • Make adjusting text size obvious

  • Make all the text adjust

  • Allow other changes – contrast, keyboard, voice, and more

  • Check the colors for color-blind site visitors

  • Think about the cultural meaning of colors

  • Color

  • 1. Work with your brand colors

  • 2. Use light on dark sparingly

  • 3. Keep the background clear

  • 4. Keep the contrast high

  • Space

  • 1. Create consistent patterns

  • 2. Align elements on a grid

  • 3. Keep active space in your content

  • 4. Beware of false bottoms

  • 5. Don’t let headings float

  • 6. Don’t center text

  • Typography

  • 1. Set a legible sans serif font as the default

  • 2. Make the default text size legible for your visitors

  • 3. Set a medium line length as the default

  • 4. Don’t write in all capitals

  • 5. Underline only links

  • 6. Use italics sparingly

  • Putting it all together: A case study

  • Case Study 3-1: Revising a poorly designed web page

  • Summarizing Chapter 3

  • 4 Starting Well: Home Pages

  • Home pages – content-rich with few words

  • 1. Be findable through search engines

  • Your keywords must match searchers’ keywords

  • Gaming the system doesn’t work

  • Remarkable content matters

  • 2. Identify the site

  • 3. Set the site’s tone and personality

  • 4. Help people get a sense of what the site is all about

  • 5. Continue the conversation quickly

  • Focus on your key visitors and their key tasks

  • Case Study 4-1: Focusing on personas and tasks

  • Let people start major tasks on the home page

  • Make sure the forms are high on the page

  • Don’t put unnecessary forms up front

  • 6. Send each person on the right way

  • Put Search near the top

  • Use your site visitors’ words in your links

  • In mobile versions, strip down to the essentials

  • Summarizing Chapter 4

  • 5 Getting There: Pathway Pages

  • 1. Site visitors hunt first

  • 2. People don’t want to read while hunting

  • Case Study 5-1: Making links clear on a pathway page

  • 3. A pathway page is like a table of contents

  • Watch the jargon

  • Don’t assume a picture is enough

  • Write in fragments

  • Case Study 5-2: Getting people to the links quickly

  • 5. Three clicks is a myth

  • Don’t make people think

  • Keep people from needing to go back

  • 6. Many people choose the first option

  • Summarizing Chapter 5

  • 6 Breaking up and Organizing Content

  • 1. Think “information,” not “document”

  • Need: Right information in the right amount

  • Problem: Little pieces of paper get lost too easily

  • Solution: Online, “index cards” work well

  • 2. Divide your content thoughtfully

  • Divide web content by questions people ask

  • Divide web content by topic or task

  • Divide web content by product type

  • Divide web content by information type

  • Separating and linking related information

  • Moving the conversation ahead through related links

  • Meshing marketing calendars and editorial calendars

  • Divide web content by people

  • Dividing by people on the home page

  • Dividing by people below the home page

  • Divide web content by life event

  • Divide web content by time or sequence

  • 3. Consider how much to put on one web page

  • What does the site visitor want?

  • How long is the page?

  • What’s the download time?

  • How much do people want to print?

  • What will I do for small screens – and for social media?

  • 4. Use PDFs sparingly and only for good reasons

  • Never say “never”

  • When might a PDF file be appropriate?

  • Sometimes, having both PDF and HTML is best

  • When is a PDF file not appropriate?

  • When people don’t want the whole document

  • When people are mostly on mobile devices

  • When people don’t want to print

  • When people are not comfortable with PDF files

  • When people need accessible information

  • Why else is a PDF not appropriate?

  • PDF files are optimized for the printed page

  • PDF files usually come from paper documents

  • Summarizing Chapter 6

  • 7 Focusing on Conversations and Key Messages

  • Seven guidelines for focusing on conversations and key messages

  • 1. Give people only what they need

  • Revising content you already have

  • Writing new content

  • Case Study 7-1: Using personas and their conversations to plan your content

  • 2. Cut! Cut! Cut! And cut again!

  • 3. Think “bite, snack, meal”

  • 4. Start with your key message

  • Key message first = inverted pyramid style

  • Eye-tracking shows the need for key message first

  • 5. Layer information

  • Layering with an overlay

  • Layering with progressive disclosure

  • Case Study 7-2: Opening layers on the same web page

  • 6. Break down walls of words

  • Case Study 7-3: Breaking down walls of words made the difference!

  • 7. Plan to share and engage through social media

  • Summarizing Chapter 7

  • Interlude 2 Finding Marketing Moments

  • Marketing on the web is different: Pull not push

  • Join the site visitor’s conversation

  • Find the right marketing moments

  • Don’t miss good marketing moments

  • Never stop the conversation

  • 8 Announcing Your Topic with a Clear Headline

  • Seven guidelines for headlines that work well

  • 1. Use your site visitors’ words

  • 2. Be clear instead of cute

  • 3. Think about your global audience

  • 4. Try for a medium length (about eight words)

  • 5. Use a statement, question, or call to action

  • 6. Combine labels (nouns) with more information

  • 7. Add a short description if people need it

  • Summarizing Chapter 8

  • 9 Including Useful Headings

  • Good headings help readers in many ways

  • Thinking about headings also helps authors

  • Eleven guidelines for writing useful headings

  • 1. Don’t slap headings into old content

  • 2. Start by outlining

  • 3. Choose a good heading style: Questions, statements, verb phrases

  • Questions as headings

  • Answer your site visitors’ questions

  • Case Study 9-1: Answering your site visitors’ questions

  • Statements as headings

  • Verb phrases as headings

  • 4. Use nouns and noun phrases sparingly

  • Sometimes a label (a noun) is enough

  • But nouns often don’t explain enough

  • Case Study 9-2: Turning nouns into better headings

  • 5. Put your site visitors’ wordsin the headings

  • 6. Exploit the power of parallelism

  • 7. Use only a few levels of headings

  • 8. Distinguish headings from text

  • 9. Make each level of heading clear

  • 10. Help people jump to content within a web page

  • Put same-page links first under the headline

  • Don’t put off-page links at the top of the content area

  • Don’t put same-page links in the left navigation column

  • 11. Evaluate! Read the headings

  • Summarizing Chapter 9

  • Interlude 3 The New Life of Press Releases

  • The old life of press releases

  • The new life of press releases

  • How do people use press releases on the web?

  • Story 1: Press release as summary

  • Story 2: Press release as fact sheet

  • Story 3: Press release as basic information

  • Story 4: The press call up

  • What should we do?

  • Write for the web

  • Think about visuals as well as words

  • Plan for mobile and social media

  • Does it make a difference?

  • 10 Tuning up Your Sentences

  • Ten guidelines for tuning up your sentences

  • 1. Talk to your site visitors – Use “you”

  • Use the imperative in instructions

  • Use “you” throughout

  • Case Study 10-1: Addressing the reader directly

  • Use “you” to be gender-neutral

  • Use appropriate gender for specific people

  • Converse directly even for serious messages

  • 2. Use “I” and “we”

  • Be consistent in how you use “I,” “you,” and “we”

  • When the site visitor asks the question

  • When the site asks the question

  • In blogs and social media, “I” is fine

  • For your own work, “I” is fine

  • For an organization, use “we”

  • 3. Write in the active voice (most of the time)

  • Case Study 10-2: Writing in the active voice

  • 4. Write short, simple sentences

  • Very short sentences are okay, too

  • Fragments may also work

  • Busy site visitors always need clear writing

  • 5. Cut unnecessary words

  • 6. Give extra information its own place

  • Case Study 10-3: Untangling a convoluted sentence

  • 7. Keep paragraphs short

  • A one-sentence paragraph is fine

  • Lists or tables may be even better

  • 8. Start with the context

  • Case Study 10-4: Starting with the context – the topic

  • 9. Put the action in the verb

  • 10. Use your site visitors’ words

  • Write for your site visitors

  • Know your site visitors

  • And always use plain language

  • Summarizing Chapter 10

  • 11 Using Lists and Tables

  • Six guidelines for useful lists

  • 1. Use bulleted lists for items or options

  • 2. Match bullets to your site’s personality

  • 3. Use numbered lists for instructions

  • Turn paragraphs into steps

  • For branching, consider a table under the step

  • Show as well as tell

  • Use numbered lists for noninstructions thoughtfully

  • Case Study 11-1: Using both bulleted and numbered lists

  • 4. Keep most lists short

  • Short (5–10 items) is best for unfamiliar items

  • Long may be okay for very familiar lists

  • 5. Try to start list items the same way

  • 6. Format lists well

  • Reduce space between the introduction and the list

  • Put space between long list items

  • Wrap lines under each other

  • Put what happens on a line by itself

  • Lists and tables: What’s the difference?

  • Six guidelines for useful tables

  • 1. Use tables for a set of “if, then” sentences

  • 2. Use tables to compare numbers

  • 3. Think tables = answers to questions

  • 4. Think carefully about the first column

  • Case Study 11-2: Knowing when to use a table

  • 5. Keep tables simple

  • How many columns?

  • Consider web constraints

  • Consider site visitors’ conversations

  • How many rows?

  • 6. Format tables well

  • Reduce lines: Help people focus on information

  • Line up columns: Don’t center text in a table

  • Summarizing Chapter 11

  • Interlude 4 Legal Information Can Be Clear

  • Accurate, sufficient, clear – You can have all three

  • Avoid archaic legal language

  • Avoid technical jargon

  • Use site visitors’ words in headings

  • Follow the rest of this book, too

  • Case Study 4-1: Putting it all together

  • 12 Writing Meaningful Links

  • Seven guidelines for writing meaningful links

  • 1. Don’t make new program or product names links by themselves

  • 2. Think ahead: Launch and land on the same name

  • 3. For actions, start with a verb

  • 4. Make the link meaningful – Not Click here or just More

  • Click here is not necessary

  • More or Learn More by itself isn’t enough

  • Say what it’s “more” about

  • 5. Don’t embed links (for most content)

  • If people are browsing, embedding may be okay

  • Put links at the end, below, or next to your text

  • 6. Make bullets with links active, too

  • 7. Make unvisited and visited links obvious

  • Use your link colors only for links

  • Show visited links by changing the color

  • Summarizing Chapter 12

  • 13 Using Illustrations Effectively

  • Five purposes that illustrations can serve

  • Exact item: What do customers want to see?

  • Self-service: What helps people help themselves?

  • Showing options visually

  • Connecting paper documents to online forms

  • Process: Will pictures make words memorable?

  • Charts, graphs, maps: Do they help site visitors get my message?

  • Let people decide how much to see

  • Show numbers in charts – with a key message title

  • Follow principles of good data reporting

  • Mood: Which pictures support the conversation?

  • Match photos to your messages

  • Think about what the photo is saying

  • Seven guidelines for using illustrations effectively

  • 1. Don’t make people wonder what or why

  • 2. Choose an appropriate size

  • Don’t let large pictures push content down too far

  • Make sure small pictures are clear

  • 3. Show diversity

  • To represent your site visitors, think broadly

  • Show your internal diversity, but be truthful

  • Test! Test! Test!

  • 4. Don’t make content look like ads

  • 5. Don’t annoy people with blinking, rolling, waving, or wandering text or pictures

  • 6. Use animation only where it helps

  • 7. Make illustrations accessible

  • Make ALT-text meaningful

  • Summarizing Chapter 13

  • 14 Getting from Draft to Final

  • Read, edit, revise, proofread your own work

  • Think of writing as revising drafts

  • Read what you wrote

  • Check your links

  • Check your facts

  • Let it rest

  • Why let it rest?

  • What should you do after your draft has rested?

  • Read it out loud

  • Use dictionaries, handbooks, style guides

  • Run the spell checker but don’t rely on it

  • Proofread

  • Share drafts with colleagues

  • Accept and learn from the process

  • Work with colleagues to fit the content strategy

  • Share partial drafts

  • Have someone read it out loud

  • Ask what your key message is

  • Pay attention to comments

  • Put your ego in the drawer, cheerfully ?

  • Walk your personas through their conversations

  • Let editors help you

  • Get help with the details

  • Get help with the big picture

  • Negotiate successful reviews (and edits)

  • Setting up good reviews

  • Meet with reviewers at the beginning

  • Practice the doctrine of no surprise

  • Help your reviewers understand good web writing

  • Getting useful information from reviewers

  • Tell reviewers when the schedule changes

  • Give reviewers a “heads up” a few days in advance

  • Make your expectations clear

  • If you have specific needs, let reviewers know

  • Using reviews well

  • Don’t get defensive

  • Don’t automatically accept changes

  • Rewrite to avoid misunderstandings

  • Persuade

  • Negotiate

  • Communicate

  • Summarizing Chapter 14

  • Interlude 5 Creating an Organic Style Guide

  • Use a style guide for consistency

  • Use a style guide to remind people

  • Don’t reinvent

  • Appoint an owner

  • Get management support

  • Make it easy to create, to find, and to use

  • 15 Test! Test! Test!

  • Why do usability testing?

  • What’s needed for usability testing

  • What’s not needed for usability testing

  • How do we do a usability test?

  • What most people do

  • Even quicker: “A morning a month”

  • What variations might we consider?

  • Remotely, with a facilitator

  • Remotely, without a facilitator

  • Testing around the globe

  • Testing in a group setting

  • Fielding alternatives (A/B testing)

  • Why not just do focus groups?

  • What does a focus group need?

  • Why isn’t a focus group the best technique?

  • Can we combine usability testing and focus groups?

  • A final point: Test the content!!

  • For More Information – A Bibliography

  • Some useful articles,blog posts, and books

  • A few of many useful web sites

  • Some older research that’s still valuable

  • Subject Index

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  • Index of Web Sites Shown as Examples

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  • About Ginny Redish

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