Writing Website Content

In general, writing for the web is different from writing for print media. People prefer to read from paper than from the screen. Even today, given the choice of reading text from a small handheld device, or from a conventional paper book, most people will choose the latter.

Therefore, when writing content that will be read on the web, it is important to take this into account and follow some simple practices.

Short and to the point

Think carefully about the message you are trying to get across, and do it with minimum fuss.

Try and make sure your sentences and paragraphs are reasonably short. Re-read what you have written and think about how you could get your point across more succinctly.

If you find your paragraphs are too long, find an appropriate place in the text two split them up.

Target audience

If you have a specialist website, you may expect your visitors to have a certain level of knowledge about your subject, and you can write accordingly.

On the other hand, if your site needs to appeal to a wide range of people, make sure you take this into account.

Highlighting text

Visitors will often not read all of the text on a page, so highlighting important parts of your text can be critical. There are several ways of highlighting text, including the use of:

• Bold
• Italics
• Large text
• Colour

Be careful to not overdo it, or your text will look messy and may become difficult to read.

Use of jargon

Thinking about your target audience, will they understand what you have written? Have you used lots of technical or trade terms? Have you assumed that they know more than they do?

If you must use jargon, think about having a glossary of terms or use hyperlinks to explain terms. For example, WWW, HTTP, TTFN.

Spelling and grammar

Not everybody has great spelling and grammar skills. Thankfully, these days, any word processor worth its salt has a spell checker, and most have a grammar checker.

Don’t rely on just these tools though; make sure you get someone else to proof read your text. For example, the following phrases will get through a spelling and grammar checker:

• Lovely whether today
• Eye halve a spelling checker
• I will weight hear
• Everyone nose it
• Chose this oar that