Rewriting your website in 2010? Most companies will make a pig’s ear of it, says Catherine Toole. Get it right by following 3 simple rules.
Posted by Catherine Toole to online copywriting, style, Tone of voice, Web writing
Vote for the word or phrase you’d most like to see removed from the web – best suggestions will feature at ad:tech 2009
Posted by Dan Fielder to events, style, Tone of voice, Web writing
A short list of words and phrases that should never darken your online doors again… 1. Welcome On a homepage, a Welcome message contains no information and is a massive waste of very valuable screen space. The way to welcome your visitors online is to provide information that shows them exactly what you’re about and [...]
Posted by Dan Fielder to style, usability, Web writing, Writing for search
A comment I’ve heard a few times recently from content types of various kinds — especially writers with a print or advertising background — is that web writing isn’t creative. Is that true?
Posted by Dan Fielder to style, Tone of voice, Web writing
I notice that the customer service desk in every Sainsbury superstore now sits under a banner that says not “Customer service” but “Here to help”. It’s a reminder that real-world retailing often has some useful lessons for online best practice (they’ve been using eyetracking for years, too). That Sainsbury’s sign is a great example of [...]
Posted by Dan Fielder to style, Tone of voice, usability, Web writing
Digital copy is underappreciated, underrated and – astonishingly – still the poor cousin of the web relaunch process.
Posted by Catherine Toole to design, style, usability, Web writing
Stylistic variation versus writing for the web: fight!! Many writers – journalists especially – find it hard to call something the same thing twice. If you’re writing about Michael Owen, for instance, you might refer to him as “Michael Owen” the first time round, then perhaps “the Newcastle striker” at the second mention, then perhaps [...]
Posted by Dan Fielder to style, Tone of voice, Web writing, Writing for search
Further to our attempts to rehabilitate the passive voice – or at least demonstrate that using the passive appropriately doesn’t make you a spineless victim type – we were intrigued to read Jakob Nielsen’s recent newsletter topic, “Passive Voice is Redeemed for Web Headings”. The grand wizard of usability argues that the “active voice is [...]
Posted by Dan Fielder to style, Web writing, Writing for search
It’s standard practice among dispensers of business writing advice to rubbish the passive. Examples like “mistakes were made…” and “the decision was taken to…” and “it has been decided that” paint the picture of a clunky verbal construction that produces language that is invariably woolly, bureaucratic, evasive.While it’s probably no bad thing to observe the [...]
Posted by Dan Fielder to style, Web writing
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