Aug 1998; by Dennis G. Jerz
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.  There seems to be an unspoken assumption that the content will be supplied by the marketing and PR people, by the technoweenies, or worse, the pointy-haired bosses (of "Dilbert" fame).

• Marketers and PR people want to spur the reader to action.  But readers are quickly turned off by empty claims (Click here for the best web site ever!!)
• Technoweenies occasionally talk about clarifying your purpose or helping users navigate smoothly through your site.
  • Some rightly recognize the primacy of the content (after all, Bill Gates admits that "Content is King," though he focuses on ownership rather than distribution);
  • However, authors of "HTML Tips" sites are usually more interested in fiddling with fancy bells and whistles than they are in telling you how to make your content worth reading on the Internet.
• As for the pointy-haired bosses, well, they're hopeless.

None of these people is trained to provide useful information efficiently and accurately; they're all going to try to do whatever they were trained to do instead.  

Here's an illustration of why the Internet needs more good writers.  Web designers are frequently talented people who combine creative graphic design with a flair for programming.  They often work with templates -- test versions of web pages that display fancy graphics, but with dummy text -- the text isn't important to their work at this stage.  Often the dummy text begins like this:

Once the designer has picked out the color scheme and sketched the layout, little keyboard geeklings called "HTML editors" are supposed to pour the content into the templates, just like you pour jello into a mold.  But surprisingly often, the HTML editors forget to remove all of that dummy text.

When	Hits on "lorem ipsum dolor sit amet"
Early 1999	6000
Aug 1999	7000
Jul 2000	12,000
Sep 2002	40,000 pages with this dummy text

Often the dummy text appears where the title of the page should be, in captions, or in other areas where readers expect to find information.

Concluding observations:

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See also:

• Navigation: An often neglected component of web authorship
• How to Write Web Pages (short articles emphasizing the content, rather than the coding)

by Dennis G. Jerz
Aug 1998 -- first posted
14 July 2000 -- modified
21 Apr 2003 -- minor updates

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Related Links

Dennis G. Jerz 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 link is for you. Dennis G. Jerz Blurbs: Previews of 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. Dennis G. Jerz Two Titles for Web Pages The in-context title is what your reader sees at the top of the page; the out-of-context title appears on other pages, as part of a blurb or a list of search engine results. Dennis G. Jerz Navigation: An often-neglected component of web authorship Divide your content into logical, free-standing units that can be strung together like beads, in different orders. Jakob Nielsen How Users Read on the Web "They don't. People rarely read Web pages word by word; instead, they scan the page, picking out individual words and sentences." Holly M. Burns The Top Fifteen Mistakes of First Time Web Design Frames, "under construction" signs and lack of "unique content" are among the mistakes described on this useful page. Salon.com Boo hoo! The failure of the colossally overdesigned "boo.com" is further proof that looking cool is not enough.