Writing for Websites

This week I'll talk about writing for the Web with my Tourism Degree students, for most of whom this is a new field. I prepared a handout for them that visitors here will probably find pretty elementary, but if anyone does find it helpful, then good. It's a 5-page Word file.

Update, March 2: The original post had an omission (giving me yet another reason to urge my students not to proofread off the screen!), so here it is again, corrected and in both Word and PDF formats.

Download Writing for Websites.doc

Download Writing for Websites.pdf

Comments

[Alex]

The articale you posted is quite good. Writing for the web is different then any other writing I do. It needs to be hard hitting and quick, also a lot of the convensional rules are forgiven for a more conversational style.

[joel ronez]

Hi Crof!

Thanks for your article I found it very usefull. I made a translation in french here if anybody is interested :
http://blog.ronez.net/index.php?p=62

Word version :
http://www.ronez.net/doc/050301-ecrire-pour-internet_FR.doc

[Tina]

Hi, Crawford,

As a novice web writer and a student in Scientific and Technical Writing, I’d like to point out that your handout provides a very useful resource. It presents structured and clear principles along with well articulated instructions.
The “Information” section in “THREE BASIC PRINCIPLES” attracted my special attention. It looks like “cutting text” is a really helpful method. I didn’t quite apply it to my webpage, but I will, as soon as I finish typing this. I’m used to composing long sentences and paragraphs, because that seemed to be the main difference between speech and writing – short utterances versus long. However, the purpose of any document on a website is to deliver information and not decoration. Therefore, words should be short and informative.
The other thing that caught my interest was “hooks”. I’ll try to apply those to my project as well.
There are a lot of other factors that I found important and useful, however, I felt that I’d understand them better if there was an example in the handout.
I’m really glad that I found this information and I would like to share it with my classmates, because I think that many of them could benefit from some organized knowledge of web writing. In this connection, I’d like to ask for your permission to distribute the handout in my Online Documentation class at STC graduate program at Bowling Green State University.

Thank you,

Tina.

[Crawford Kilian]

Hi, Tina--

Of course you're welcome to pass the file on Webwriting to anyone who wants it.

Yes, examples would have helped, but I was writing a handout designed to supplement a lecture full of examples. You might see if you can find Writing for the Web: Geeks' Edition, which does offer some examples...though it's now five years old and therefore seriously out of date.

[Chet Lane]

Hello,

Thank you very much for taking the time to write and release the document “Writing for Websites” to the public. I really a appreciate it. It has helped me quite a bit with my new web site already, and it will help me with my future websites as well. I am thinking about doing web design and content creation professionally, right now it only supports my hobbies. Thank you again, sir!

Regards,
Chet Lane