This page discusses - Facts about Web Writing

Facts about Web Writing

It is always better to know all the facts about the medium you are writing for. The most important ones are as follows-

• A majority of the users (79%) scan the web pages while looking for the relevant information.

• Reading from a computer screen is more difficult than from the paper. Readability is reduced by 25%.

• The word count should be 50% of that in a printed document to facilitate reading and scanning both.

• Concise written material guarantees higher user satisfaction.

• Task time improves by 180%, user errors are reduced by 809%, the memory becomes 100%, along with web traffic that becomes 1595 better the subjective satisfaction takes a jump by 37%.

Application of writing guidelines reduces the cognitive load of the users and as a result the information is processed faster and more effectively. There is a lot of mayhem regarding making the material concise because there is the danger of cutting out too much. For this purpose a tightening of language and removal of over detailed information is required.

The users find the edited material more complete and informative rather then a vast unending sea of information of which they might not be able to keep track.

There are a few things that always need to be kept in mind while writing for the web. The foremost is who your audience is, what is the special requirement of this audience? , what is their expected knowledge in the field? And what could be their possible reasons for reading this page.

Once you have all these considerations in mind then you will know exactly what to write, how to write and the only guidelines to be kept in mind are some of the above, apart from being concise which is always a constant factor.

You can be popular if you are open to feed back from the users as this make you work on the area where you lack and also make you aware of the changing trends amongst users. But don’t forget that if you are liked and appreciated, the adulation you will get will go a long way to encourage you.

As far as general pointers to writing well are concerned then the following passages will give you a broad hint as to what is correct and what is incorrect. English that you use should be a basic simple one, such that is easily understood by all people without too much of effort.

Sentences should be kept short and simple, with more use of active rather than passive voice. Trendy words and slang should be avoided because it creates a very causal impression on the user. Three keywords apart from this that need to be kept in mind about any writing for the web are-

Scannable

Concise

Objective

If you find it hard to make your work concise then these are some of the tricks that you can adopt-

Always use a word that is shorter over the longer one.

Cut out the unnecessary words

Same goes for the unnecessary phrases.

Try to write with a PDA

Take out a print and edit it, for once be ruthless.