Page 1 of 3 When I first started teaching Dreamweaver and other web technologies at the Government Printing Office's Institute for Federal Printing and Electronic Publishing (IFPEP), the print world, if not still dominant, was still a bustling industry. Printed documents are still a preferred way of reading and delivering many kinds of documents. As the years have gone by, however, I have been seeing a particular kind of student in my classes: the print designer who realizes that to stay in business, she must diversify and train to include web publishing in her repertoire.
Given that reality, one of the questions that these print designers ask me is how to re-purpose print documents for the web, and more specifically, how to write effectively for the web. In this series, we'll explore that topic in depth. Each article's download folder will include copy that you can use to experiment with the featured concepts. It will also include my interpretation of how to effectively present the copy.
According to statistics, 79% of readers scan text on web pages rather than read every word. Therefore, in this first article, we'll look at how we can help readers more easily scan text by using headings, hyperlinks, bolded phrases, and lists.
Let's first summarize most people's habits when reading on the web:
Tip: Keep in mind the average readerâs reading level when writing for the web. Half of the American public reads at the eighth grade level or lower. You can assess the reading level of your writing by using the Flesch-Kincaid standard. It divides the average sentence length (number of words divided by number of sentences) by the average number of syllables per word (number of syllables divided by the number of words).
The easiest way to attain a suitable reading level is to break your material into short sentences. A good word count is about 15â20 words per sentence. Use three or four sentences in a paragraph and limit each paragraph to one idea. Begin each paragraph with a topic sentence, placing ideas of greatest interest at the beginning.
Keywords
Web writing, headings, links, lists, scan text
