Writing Electronic Text: Tips and Guidelines for Writers
Plenty of other web pages offer advice on coding, design, and stylesheet tricks. This collection, emphasizing content, rather than coding, offers advice on writing electronic documents (mostly web pages, but also e-mail and interactive fiction). It is part of a larger collection of handouts on writing. -- Dennis G. Jerz
Also on this page: Archive | Sidebar: Useful Books | Sidebar: Useful Links
Web PagesPractical Tips
In-depth Features
General Introductions |
Other E-Texts
Interactive Fiction (Text-based Computer Games)This genre of computer game dates back to "Adventure" and "Zork" from the late 70s, and now thrives as an underground amateur movement.
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Recent Additions
(Meme)X Marks
the Spot: Theorizing Metablogging via "Meme" and "Conduit"
This paper examines metablogging in terms of Dawkins's concept of
the "meme" and Reddy's critique of the "conduit"
metaphor for communication.... The language of metablogging uses metaphors
that emphasize communality and proximity, and thus offers an alternative
to the social risks Reddy associates with the conduit metaphor.
Writing Web Pages: Top 5 Conventions
Lead with your best stuff. Inform with linked text. Employ consistent
navigation. Prefer simple designs. Write scannable text.
What is this "Weblog" of
Which You Speak?
What do you get when you cross an online diary with an annotated
bibliography? You get a new writing genre native to the World Wide
Web.
Newbie Web Author Checklist
If you've recently created your first website and you're getting ready
to submit it for a class assignment, then this page is for you.
Usability Testing: 8 Quick Tips
If you already have a prototype
you want to test, you've already drafted a few usability testing questions,
and you're eager to learn how to make the most of your opportunity to
learn from your users, then this document is for you.
Titles for Web Pages: In-Context
and Out-of-Context
Most writers know the value of an informative title, but but many
beginning web authors don't know that each web page needs two titles.
Blurbs: How to Write Them for Web
Pages
A blurb is a short paragraph that previews what's on the other
end of a link. You're reading a blurb now. If it helps you decide
whether you should click the link, then it has done its job.
Hypertext Essays -- How to Write Them
The ordinary prose essay has been around for hundreds of years;
people have had a long time to discover how to write a good one.
But hypertext is a much more recent invention.
Writing for the Internet:
Why is the Advice so Scant?
Turning the pages of a book is still (and will probably always be) the
best way to read a novel; after all, the novel was designed for a "novel"
device -- the book. But the Internet has spawned new writing genres
which demand a different writing mode. Learn about that mode here.
Writing for the Internet: Illustration of
the Need
Many on-line web tutorials give practical, useful technical advice
on everything from non-clashing color combinations to effective uses
of animated GIFs, but barely mention writing at all. Web designers
too frequently ignore their content.
URL-Hacking: Do-it-yourself
Navigation
You wind up on a strange web page without any hyperlinks, and with the
unhelpful message "Use the 'Go Back' button to return to the table
of contents." If you want to explore this web site, what
do you do? Try hacking the URL.
Navigation: An often-neglected
Part of Web Authorship
To make the best use of hypertext, don't blindly follow the conventions
of printed, linear text. Instead, divide your content into logical,
free-standing units that can be strung together like beads, in different
orders.
Web Projects: What Students Should Know
First
You do not have to be a computer programmer in order to create
a good, useful web page. But you need to account for the needs
of strangers who might follow a search engine to your pages, which means
writing in a slightly different way. And don't spend too much time fiddling
with the style of your site, so that you end up neglecting the substance.
Annotate
Your Lists of Links (1998; Engineering Writing Centre, Toronto)
How Users Read on the
Web (useit.com)
Links Want
to Be Links (Jukka Korpela)
Web
Writing for Many Interest Levels (e-gineer)
Although my site does not focus on the gory details
of online publishing web, pages, I have written handouts on Learning
FrontPage and Uploading
to Geocities.words!'" |
 Writing for the Web "Since many web users have spent more time watching television than reading, the graphic elements of a web site are important to them, but text remains the core of most web sites."  The Elements of Style A classic handbook, full of gems: "When he delivered his oration on brevity to the class, he leaned forward over his desk, grasped his coat lapels in his hands, and, in a husky, conspiratorial voice, said, 'Rule Seventeen. Omit needless words! Omit needless words! Omit needless words!'" |
Scientific &
Technical Writing Jakob Nielsen Gordon Kindlmann Anonymous Genius |
