5 simple rules for web text
By working with tons of text displayed on web every day, I’ve developed some particular pet peeves as far as structure and presentation of web content is concerned.
The rules are simple, bloggers / copywriters / web journalists:
- Never ever use CAPITAL LETTERS to emphasize words.
CAPITAL LETTERS are meant to be used in names and at the start of sentences. No matter if it’s a strong word you want to accentuate or your company name (the most common case), it must follow the rules of proper CAPITALIZATION. - Avoid center aligning text
Center alignment may sound more logical to you, as it brings the text viewport just in front of reader’s eyes, but you must avoid it while writing long passages of web content. Struggling to find the start of every sentence is tiring for the eyes and disorientating, so avoid that. - Don’t use different colours in the same passage of text.
If you do, use colour to symbolize hierarchy: main text should be darker, dates or other additional data should be lighter etc. Don’t use colour to emphasize, there are attributes exactly for this reason, namely bold and italics. - Do not use suspension points at the end of every sentence, hoping to look “cool”…
These make you look neither cool nor mysterious… They are supposed to be used where you want to leave a sentiment linger - and nowhere else… - Do use white space.Absence of decent white space in e.g. a blog comment over 10 lines is a recipe for unreadability (if that word exists).Do not hesitate to hit that Enter button, it’ll make your text passages easier to scan and pay attention to.
These are all pretty basic, really, but you’d be amazed how badly content is written for the web. I can relatively withstand grammar and syntax errors (I make mistakes all the time too), but those above, I really cannot forgive.
May 23rd, 2007 at 1:06 am
It’s one of those few times I completely agree with you. Thanx for the tips!
May 23rd, 2007 at 8:16 am
MA GIATI NA MH GRAFOUME kEFALAIA???…
May 23rd, 2007 at 7:26 pm
[...] sugarenia.com del.icio.us/marjut [...]
May 29th, 2007 at 5:54 pm
How about not putting spaces between slashes?
sugar/spice vs. sugar / spice
Or a space between any punctuation at the end of a sentence?
the end. the end . the end? the end ?
May 30th, 2007 at 10:31 pm
@CaliforniaKat: I’m guilty of committing the first crime, leaving spaces between dashes and slashes all the time (I guess my programming skills grow into my typing ones).
But the second is just …wrong for the eyes.