CH 9: Editorial Style Notes
- 1. © 2004 Ken Baldauf, All rights reserved. Editorial Style CGS2826 Web Design Program in Interdisciplinary Computing Florida State University From Web Style Guide, Chapter 9: Editorial style
- 2. © 2010 Ken Baldauf, All rights reserved. Documents written to be read online should be concise and structured for scanning. Concise writing is always better, but don’t dumb down what you have to say.
- 3. © 2010 Ken Baldauf, All rights reserved. (Back to) Chunking The key to good chunking is to divide your information into comprehensive segments. That way users will have direct and complete access to the topics they are interested in without having to wade through irrelevant material or follow a series of links to get the whole picture.
- 4. © 2010 Ken Baldauf, All rights reserved. Page Structure Segment the content for easy scanning Use descriptive headings Highlight important words and sections Use the inverted Pyramid Place the important facts near the top of the first paragraph where users can find them quickly Also discussed as “front-loading”
- 5. © 2010 Ken Baldauf, All rights reserved. On the web, more than any other prose medium, the look of text layout strongly affects how readers relate to written content.
- 6. © 2010 Ken Baldauf, All rights reserved. Rhetoric Rhetoric is the art and technique of persuasion, through oral, written, or visual media. Ethos establishes the credibility of an information source. Pathos is the art of developing a positive emotional response in the viewer. Logos uses reason, logic, statistics, convincing examples, and depth of information to persuade an audience
- 7. © 2010 Ken Baldauf, All rights reserved. Embedded hypertext links pose two fundamental design problems: •They disrupt the flow of content in your site by inviting the user to leave your site. •They can also radically alter the context of information by dumping the users into unfamiliar territory without preamble or explanation when they follow the embedded links to new pages. Links
- 8. © 2010 Ken Baldauf, All rights reserved. Poor: Click here for more information on link underlines. Better: For universal usability, use link underlines to ensure that all users can identify links. For universal usability, links must be visually identifiable with or without color. Links By providing different link colors for visited and unvisited links, you allow users to identify the paths they have already taken