Letting Go of the Words: Writing Web Content that Works

Janice Redish

Elsevier, Aug 14, 2012 - Computers - 368 pages

Web site design and development continues to become more sophisticated. An important part of this maturity originates with well-laid-out and well-written content. Ginny Redish is a world-renowned expert on information design and how to produce clear writing in plain language for the web. All of the invaluable information that she shared in the first edition is included with numerous new examples. New information on content strategy for web sites, search engine optimization (SEO), and social media make this once again the only book you need to own to optimize your writing for the web.

• New material on content strategy, search engine optimization, and social media
• Lots of new and updated examples
• More emphasis on new hardware like tablets, iPads, and iPhones

Contents

• 1 Content Content Content: 1
• Purposes Personas Conversations: 17
• Interlude 1 Content Strategy: 37
• 3 Designing for Easy Use: 45
• Home Pages: 73
• Pathway Pages: 89
• 6 Breaking up and Organizing Content: 101
• 7 Focusing on Conversations and Key Messages: 125
• Interlude 2 Finding Marketing Moments: 151
• 8 Announcing Your Topic with a Clear Headline: 157
• 9 Including Useful Headings: 165
• Interlude 3 The New Life of Press Releases: 189
• 10 Tuning up Your Sentences: 197
• 11 Using Lists and Tables: 227
• Interlude 4 Legal Information Can Be Clear: 253
• 12 Writing Meaningful Links: 259
• 13 Using Illustrations Effectively: 271
• 14 Getting from Draft to Final: 289
• Interlude 5 Creating an Organic Style Guide: 303
• 15 Test Test Test: 307
• For More Information A Bibliography: 317
• Subject Index: 323
• Index of Web Sites Shown as Examples: 331
• About Ginny Redish: 333

About the author

Janice (Ginny) Redish has been helping clients and colleagues communicate clearly for more than 20 years. For the past ten years, her focus has been helping people create usable and useful web sites.A linguist by training, Ginny is passionate about understanding how people think, how people read, how people use web sites - and helping clients write web content that meets web users' needs in the ways in which they work.Ginny loves to teach and mentor - and to practice what she preaches. She turns research into practical guidelines that her clients and students can apply immediately to their web sites.Ginny's earlier books received rave reviews for being easy to read and easy to use, as well as comprehensive and full of great advice. She is co-author of two classic books on usability:* A Practical Guide to Usability Testing (with Joseph Dumas)* User and Task Analysis for Interface Design (with JoAnn Hackos)She is also the author of the section on writing on www.usability.gov.Ginny's work and leadership in the usability and plain language communities have earned her numerous awards, including the Rigo Award from the ACM Special Interest Group on the Design of Communication and the Alfred N. Goldsmith Award from the IEEE Professional Communication Society.Ginny is a Fellow of the Society for Technical Communication and a past member of the Board of Directors of both the Society for Technical Communication and the Usability Professionals' Association.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Letting Go of the Words: Writing Web Content that Works; Interactive Technologies; Letting Go of the Words, Janice Redish; The Morgan Kaufmann series in interactive technologies
• Author: Janice Redish
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Elsevier, 2012
• ISBN: 0123859301, 9780123859303
• Length: 368 pages
• Subjects: Computers / Human-Computer Interaction (HCI); Computers / Interactive & Multimedia; Computers / Internet / General; Computers / Internet / Web Design; Computers / Internet / Web Programming; Computers / User Interfaces; Language Arts & Disciplines / General