Writing for the Web, Continued

Edit Ruthlessly

This is my favorite step in content development: methodically separating the wheat from the chaff. It's also one of the most difficult steps in the process, mainly because it can require trashing someone else's painfully constructed words.

For the Web, editing is a crucial step in the content development process. There's only one best approach: show no mercy. Every idea, word, or sentence might seem wonderfully appealing, but to create documents that work on the Web, you'll need to ruthlessly cut some of them back.

Dumbing down or cleaning up?
People don't read as much on the Web as they do in print (according to Jakob Nielsen, they read 25% slower as well) . They can't or won't absorb the same amount of information. Something has to go. You've taken the care to understand your audience, construct your content, and make your document scannable and concise. Take the time to evaluate the text you're left with, and strip away what is not needed for meaning or style.

To be very honest, this sometimes means "dumbing down" your text. As bad as the term sounds, that is occasionally what's called for. This does not necessarily mean that the civilized world is in danger of collapsing. It does mean that where appropriate to your audience and purpose, you should condense, cut, and generally clean up--and you should do it unashamedly. Making a difficult concept clear to a large audience is a worthy skill, especially in this medium.

Find out more about content development for the Web. Browse the Web Index.

Jennifer Fleming is an Anchor producer and the author of the upcoming book Web Navigation: Designing the User Experience (O'Reilly, 1998). She runs Square Circle Solutions, a Boston-based web firm specializing in user experience consulting and idea generation.

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