Some Notes on Writing for political Web-sites

This is the first post in the English language. I am thankful for the note I got from the good colleague in Bangkok that this forum should also be open to those colleagues not (yet) fluent in German.

Today, I am sharing with you notes of a presentation on writing for online-media. You will see I rely heavily on online-writing Guru Nick Usborne and the uncrowned king of website usability Jakob Nielsen.

You might want to consider these points while writing for this blog.

 

 

As you write for the Web, the basic rules of journalism apply. Still, the special features of the Internet have created certain rules for good online-writing.

• Investigating, writing texts or headlines and selecting illustrations are the daily routine of journalists in the conventional media. In addition to these functions, online-journalists and writers tend to spend more time copy-editing, re-writing and readjusting of existing texts play a more prominent role for online-journalists.

• Unlike the majority of the traditional media, (political) websites and blogs address specific target audiences who search for specific news not available elsewhere. This expectation of the target audience should guide the editorial policy of the website.

• Unlike the offline-media, space is limitless on the Web. Still, online-editors should use space more cautiously than their colleagues working offline.

• Keeping it simple is a good advice for any writer in any medium. “The Web calls out for simple language built on shorts words. That kind of language is very close to the natural style of the spoken word and fits in very well with how people like to communicate online.” (Nick Usborne, Net Words. Creating High-Impact Online Copy, New York 2002, p. 223.)

• Also the shorts texts deserve attention. Short texts (captions to photographs, headlines and subeadings) are often the most important texts. “If most people are just skimming your pages, it’s short text that will catch their attention and ultimately hold or lose their interest.” (Usborne, op. cit., p. 217.)

Jakob Nielsen’s tips

In his benchmark publication “Designing Web Usability”, Jakob Nielsen (New Riders, Indianapolis, Indiana 1999) gives some additional important guidelines for writing for the web:

Be succinct. Have in mind that online-readers try to minimize the time spent in front of their screen. Therefore, be concise and come to the heart of the issue instantly. Write no more than 50 percent of the text you would have used to cover the same material in a print publication.

Write for scannability. So-called usability studies have revealed that online reading habits differ from the reading patterns of conventional media. Readers scroll the texts in search of key-words. Therefore, don’t oblige users to read long continuous blocks of text; instead, use

• short paragraphs,
• subheadings, and
• bulleted lists

to break the flow of uniform text blocks.

One idea per paragraph only. Users will skip over any additional ideas if they are not caught by the first words of the paragraph.

Put the essence in the lead. As in conventional journalism, the inverted pyramid applies (important information in the front, less important matters follow and may be deleted without losing the essence of the story).

Be credible. Users dislike exaggerations and emotional writing style with boastful subjective claims (“best ever”). Credibility suffers, when readers see that the site exaggerates.

Be up to date. Update your site on a regular basis, and as soon as possible after important events relevant to your institution and the target audience. A rule of thumb for a non-profit political website: update at least one time every week.

… let’s see how whether we can do it!