Writing for the Web, Continued

Make It Scannable

When something is scannable, it means you can easily scan it for key points. This is an important feature for textbooks, magazines, newspapers, and especially for information sites on the Web (where attention spans are infamously short).

How do you make something scannable? It involves adding document features such as headers, lists, or pullout quotes. Often this happens during the editing stage instead of the writing stage.

Headers show topic coverage
Imagine if the text of this article were laid out in one long file. Now imagine that the section headings and subheadings were stripped out. How would you tell whether this article includes a discussion of pullout quotes? How would you tell where that discussion was within the article, and how much time was devoted to it? Without header structures, you would have to read the article to be sure.

The longer a document, the more you'll need headers to communicate what topics you've covered. In a textbook, there might be chapter titles, top-level headings within the chapter, and subheads within the top-level headings. In this article, there are section headings for the five main points (for example, "Make It Scannable") and subheadings within each main point (for example, "Headers show topic coverage").

Header style varies depending on what is called "house style." In most cases, top-level headers are shown by using larger type and by making the first letter of header words uppercase (for example, "Make It Scannable"). Subheadings usually are smaller in size and appear without uppercase letters (as in "Headers show topic coverage"). Occasionally, italic type is used to subheadings or categories within subheadings.

Lists make multiple concepts clear
Bulleted lists can dramatically improve a document's scannability. They offer:

• an easily digested overview of key points
• differentiation between key points and the rest of the text
• a concise format

You can see from this example that lists are a powerful way to communicate multiple points rapidly and clearly. If I had instead written

Bulleted lists can dramatically improve a document's scannability. They offer an easily digested overview of key points, differentiation between key points and the rest of the text, and a concise format.

Pullout quotes offer content teasers
By pulling out brief, relevant quotes from the text, you can offer an added level of scannability to your documents. The pullout quote on this page probably grabbed your attention immediately and told you something about how the topic would be presented.

Choosing which quote (or quotes) to pull out is more art form than science. Try to pull out a sentence that is both catchy (since one function of a pullout is to capture a reader's attention) and relevant. Pulling out a quote that is not relevant or only peripherally relevant to the section's content can be misleading, so be careful what you choose. Keep the pullout quote brief, even if it means editing back some of the original sentence it is based on. Scannability is built on concise, clear language, so an overly wordy pullout quote won't help your readers.

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