Lucid Minds

Writing for the Web - Jakob Nielsen

Writing for the Web

Research on how users read on the Web and how authors should write their Web pages. Mainly based on studies by John Morkes and Jakob Nielsen.

Short summary of the findings: How users read on the Web [read this one first]

Full paper (long): Concise, SCANNABLE, and Objective: How to Write for the Web (unfortunately this paper was written for print and not online)
Case study: Applying Writing Guidelines to Web Pages improved usability by 159% when rewriting sample pages from a popular website
Detailed study materials, including downloadable page files, tasks, and questionnaires (only useful if you want to replicate our experiments or conduct new studies in the area of reading and writing on the Web)

See also these related essays by Jakob Nielsen:

PR and press releases on corporate websites (75 design guidelines based on usability studies of how journalists visit company sites)
Intranet usability, including guidelines for intranet content, news on intranets, HR manuals, and how to present information about projects, teams, and individuals on intranets
Tagline Blues: what's the site about?
Microcontent: writing headlines, page titles, and email subject lines
Be succinct: how to write for the Web
How to write inverted pyramids in cyberspace
Information pollution

Writing Style Guide

The official Sun Microsystems guidelines booklet Writing for the Web can be accessed online.

Other Writing Sites

Our research shows that external links enhance the credibility of a site, so here are links to some other good sites about how to write for the Web :-)

GoodDocuments.com: a site affiliated with the Trellix site authoring tool (but their advice applies even if you use other tools). Focus on writing for intranets and other utility-oriented sites.
CONTENTIOUS: a monthly "Web-zine" for online writers and editors. I particularly like their Cut the Fluff section that dissects specific examples of Web writing.
Article on Web Writing for Many Interest Levels.

Books

I have finally come across a good book, Writing for the Web, by Crawford Kilian. I am still looking for the perfect book, so if you do publish a book about Web-writing, send me a review copy and I may list it here if I find it better than Kilian.

Much is known about how to write help text, online documentation, and other technical writing, and a good deal of the advice from these fields does transfer to writing for the Web. The main difference is that Web readers are much less motivated than readers of online docs since they can't know whether the site is relevant to their goals (in contrast, the docs are always relevant to using a product, even when the writing stinks).

Dynamics in Document Design: Creating Texts for Readers, by Karen A. Schriver.: A great book about utilitarian writing, based on observations of people using a large variety of documents.
Read Me First! A Style Guide for the Computer Industry (by Sun Microsystems' tech pubs group) and The Microsoft Manual of Style for Technical Publications (2nd edition, by Microsoft's tech pubs group).: The official writing guidelines used by folks who write a lot of online docs.
Designing Usable Electronic Text: Ergonomic Aspects of Human Information Usage, by Andrew Dillon.: Not for the faint of heart: this is not a popular book; nor is it a how-to. It is a review of the research literature on online text and will save you weeks of time in the library (assuming that you want to know these basic research results in the first place).

See also my lists of recommended books about Web design and hypertext

Writing Workshop

Nielsen Norman Group has a full-day workshop on writing for the Web, with hands-on exercises for a group of writers. If you are interested in bringing this workshop into your company, please contact Luice Hwang at info@nngroup.com