Home » Websites » Useful techniques » Concise writing – clarity for the web

Concise writing – clarity for the web

Declarative sentences are good. Web readers demand pith. Bold statements are dangerous, but they won’t kill you. Timidity will – or at least your traffic. Everyone has a hazy opinion or two. The writer’s goal is clarity. Vague feelings or ideas don’t have to be vaguely written….
No matter what your audience size, you ought to write as if your readership consisted of paid subscribers whose subscriptions were perpetually about to expire. There’s no need to pander. Compel them to resubscribe.
(Dennis A. Mahoney, A List Apart)

It’s different from writing for print media. It looks different, it feels different and readers have different expectations.

You need to make your writing short, factual, brisk, focussed, and did we mention short?

Keep it short

Write in short, simple sentences. They’re easier to read on screen. Long sentences stay unread. Reduce the size of paragraphs. Long paragraphs are hard to read so break them up.

Remove half the words. Then take away another 50%. That’s nearly concise enough.

Use bullet points
Use sub headings
Use bold and italics liberally
Anything to make your writing easy to scan

Use lots of links

Include links to everything you can. Links provide collateral for your opinions. (You are offering opinions, aren’t you?) Links work like references in a book only more so. It’s one of the ways a web writer has of contributing to building his or her community. Other web site owners can usually tell which website a visitor comes from.

How long should an article be?

Articles should be around 250 words in length. Search engines take you seriously at that point. Human readers tend to give up after about 350 words unless you make it easy for them. If you need to write at greater length (ask yourself why?), consider using lots of sub headings. Help people through your words. It can be difficult to tell where you’ve got to in an article on a computer screen. Consider numbering your paragraphs.

Very long articles

If you’re writing very long articles, rather than trying to get the whole item on the screen, why not present the highlights especially the conclusion? Then you can post the full article as a PDF file that your readers can download and read at their leisure.

Signposts in the article

Headlines are important. Not so much on your website but in other places like Google results and newsreader software where readers scan headings quickly looking for something interesting. Write your headlines so they are self-contained ideas. Make it possible to get a clear idea from each heading about the content of the article. And remember, use sub headings.