Whenever you write instructions, direct or indirect, put the steps in real-life sequence, and number each step.

Here’s an example. This is a mixture of direct instructions (steps 1-4, addressed to you), and procedures carried out by other people (steps 5-8).

1. Think of a place or situation where you felt very contented.
2. Study any photographs you have taken of that place or situation, or take a new photo.
3. Send one of these photographs as a jpg to alice@contented.com or rachel@contented.com.
4. Watch the Contented blog and Twitter accounts for news of the winner.
5. On 31 August, 30 September and 31 October, Contented will announce a monthly spot-prize winner, and inform the winner by email.
6. Spot-prize winners can do one of two new courses free: Keywords Everywhere or Formatting Text for the Web.
7. Gaylene Preston will choose the best photo on or soon after 31 October.
8. The winner will get a copy of “Write Me a Web Page, Elsie!” and may do the complete Diploma in Web Content free.

These procedures are for real. So send those photos rolling in. If you’ve done the Diploma, you can always give your prize to a friend.

Look at the photos in the competition so far, and rel-a-a-x! Don’t they make you feel contented too?

Guideline 1.3: Adaptable content

Create content that can be presented in different ways (for example simpler layout) without losing information or structure.

1.3.1 Info and Relationships: Information, structure, and relationships conveyed through presentation can be programmatically determined or are available in text. (Level A)

1.3.2 Meaningful Sequence: When the sequence in which content is presented affects its meaning, a correct reading sequence can be programmatically determined. (Level A)

1.3.3 Sensory Characteristics: Instructions provided for understanding and operating content do not rely solely on sensory characteristics of components such as shape, size, visual location, orientation, or sound. (Level A)

These accessibility guidelines have three straightforward implications that affect content authors.

1. The content you produce must be built correctly. For you, that includes labelling key items correctly.

If you use a content management system, put a headline in the headline field, put a summary in the summary field, and so on.

If you create content in Word before uploading it to a web site, use Styles to mark headlines as headlines, body text as body text, summary as a summary, and so on. Don’t use big bold text to identify the parts of your document. Use Styles. And if you don’t know how to use Styles in Word (or in a WYSIWIG or other word processor), please find out now. So much depends on this.

If you leave some fields empty or put something inappropriate there, your content is not adaptable. It’ll only work for sure on a piece of paper.

2. Make sure every block of text makes sense in isolation if read from start to end.

Think of a web page as a series of blocks of text. The blocks may be short or quite long, and they are likely to move around. On your computer screen, they’re in a certain order that makes sense to you. But elsewhere the order may be different—for example, in hidden code, or on a different computer screen, or when parts of the page are recycled on other web pages.

Here’s what you must do, and it’s quite simple.

Make sure every block of text makes sense on its own. This has many useful results, quite apart from complying with WCAG 2.0 accessibility guidelines.

• Your content survives recycling and reordering.
• Blocks of content are reusable.
• Your content makes sense (we hope) when people listen to it.

3. Give cues in words as well as colour, sound, shape etc.

You may imagine that you can tell people to do something on the computer (e.g. clicking a button) just with a musical chime or by colouring the button green.

Sorry, but you always need to tell them in words as well.

• Some people are colour blind.
• Some are blind.
• Some are tone deaf.
• Some are deaf.

Your non-verbal instructions will work for some people, but they need to work for everyone. Luckily the solution is simple: use words as well.

Hi Rachel,

I’ve got a question about how we should enter dates on a) the website and b) print documents.

I have always put dates like this:

6:30pm – 7:00pm

I notice some people put dates like this:

6.30pm-7pm

And others like this:

6.30pm — 7.00pm

It’s pretty confusing!

Do you have a preference on how to include times in web content? And is it different in print?

Kind regards,
Merry-Elisabeth

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – -

Dear Merry-Elisabeth

This is the sort of point that can drive you crazy when you start comparing different web sites. Here’s a good rule: settle arguments about grammar or punctuation with a reference, not a preference.

This issue is not specific to web content, but is a punctuation issue that most organisations would include in their general style guides. (No change is needed for web content.) So first, consult your organisation style guide. That overrides other options. And if this point is not in the organisation style guide, consult a (published) style book that is used by staff.

This is what they’ll say, most likely, for the two dates or times in this situation:

Link them with an en-dash (a.k.a. an en-rule, as in ruler) without spaces.
Use the en-dash closed up in elements that form a range:
pp 23–36 1939–45 9.30–5.30

The en-rule is a line longer than a hyphen and shorter than an em-dash. Most people are unaware of its existence, and just use a hyphen or a dash.

It’s good to understand when to use the en-dash. It is rather elegant, and this esoteric knowledge makes you feel superior.

• The en-dash is a linking device implying to or and.
• The hyphen joins two words to create a new word with its own meaning.
• The em-dash separates two items.

I hope this helps.

My two favourite style books are:
New Hart’s Rules: The Handbook of Style for Writers and Editors, 2005, Oxford
Style Manual: For Authors, Editors and Printers, 6th edition: Wiley

All best wishes — keep up the good work!

Rachel

When editing web content, be bold. Speak the truth.

If the truth is that a web page is pointless, incomprehensible or garbage, don’t even think about tinkering with it. No amount of timid word-shifting will save it.

Start again. Start with the crucial questions.

• Is this page necessary? (If the answer is No, stop right there.)
• Why does this page exist? What’s the point?
• Who’s it for?
• What do your real live intended readers need to know? They. Need. To know. (Not what do I want to tell them.)

Chuck out the rubbish and if there really is a good reason for this page, don’t just cut and paste. Don’t tinker.

Rewrite it.

Here’s an easy rule of thumb when you’re writing at work: never write a sentence longer than 21 words.

OK, it’s extreme. But it will often get you out of trouble.

(Before you explode, let me remind you that phrases containing capital letters can be treated as a single “word” in this situation. Phrases like “Prime Minister of Great Britain” or “Department of Housing and Development”. People read them in one gulp, like a single word.)

The 21-word limit is a natural one. That’s roughly 7 phrases, at which point humans tend to run out of short term memory. Readers can’t remember how your sentence began. Even you can’t remember how your sentence began. What a mess.

The danger point occurs at around 21 words: that’s when your sentence risks spinning out of control.

If you are having trouble writing a particular sentence, it’s probably too long. Just chop it into two or more sentences. Or shorten the sentence by removing unnecessary words.

It’s tempting to write what you need to say. That’s good, if you’re writing a book or a poem. That’s bad, if you’re writing a web page or any document that is supposed to be helpful or even useful to the public.

Here’s an extreme example from the small web site of Pestoff Animal Control Products.

What 99% of readers want from the home page is, I presume, information about Pestoff products and an easy way to buy them. Reasonable?

Instead, this is what we read on the home page.

Thank you for visiting us.

Our site is dedicated to informing you about our highly successful products, services, distributors and clients. This is the launch page for taking you around our site and providing you with information about our business.

Use the buttons on the left to find out about our company, its products and services, its clients and our collective achievements.

You can also click on the link buttons in text at the bottom of each page or click on the button/bars within the text below to obtain specific information.

We are proud to hold ISO 9001/2000 accreditation. Click on the logo opposite to view our ISO9001/2000 certification details as issued by Bureau Veritas Quality International.

Fascinating? Just what you needed to know? Thought not.

Think what the reader needs to know. Then write what the reader needs to know.

Pestoff.co.nz — Let’s hope this inspires them to upgrade their web site. Don’t let’s be too scornful, either: any of us could fall into the same trap.

Plain, yes. Boring, no. Barbarous, never.

2010 is a big George Orwell year: the 60th anniversary of his death occurred in January.

John Rossi summarises Orwell’s life work in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

George Orwell’s advice on writing style is recycled over and over again, year after year, all over the world… for a very good reason: it is timeless.

It’s hard to beat Orwell’s clear, simple, focused tips, expressed in a style both simple and civilised.

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech that you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word when a short word will do.
3. If it is possible to cut out a word, always cut it out.
4. Use the active rather than passive voice.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

Whenever possible, use common words. Words that nearly every adult is likely to understand. Words that don’t require a trip to the dictionary.

Your aim in all business and professional writing is to get your message across quickly and clearly. Using common words is a plain language trick that really helps. It’s a simple way to spruce up your writing, making it more concise and more readable.

You’ll find hundreds of examples, once you start looking. Here are a few for starters:

• not in lieu of but instead of
• not subsequent to but after
• not under the provisions of but under.

Experiment. Wouldn’t your writing be clearer if you used:

• not transformation but change
• not outcomes but results
• not prioritized but most important
• not stakeholder but you or —well, stop and think who you really mean!

200 examples of unnecessarily complicated words, and alternatives, were published by the Local Government Association (UK) in March 2009.

Many words have optional spellings: several versions are correct. Which one will you use?

Online or on-line? web or Web? realise or realize?

In such cases, consistency rules. Your personal preference is irrelevant.

Somewhere in your (client’s) organisation is an inhouse Style Guide. It’s a publication that nobody reads except the people in Corporate Communications. Most likely you’ll find a copy there, although someone did give you one when you were first engaged.

Listed there (or should be) are the definitive spellings you must use. Otherwise chaos rules as everyone makes it up as they go along.

What’s wrong with chaos? Well, it unsettles your readers, and tortures you, the writer, with numerous fiddly little choices.

Oh dear, what if you can’t find a Style Guide and nobody seems to care anyway? Use the dictionary approved by Corporate Communications… and in extremis, use your own dictionary.

This plain language writing tip needs no explanation: the meaning is obvious. The reason is pretty obvious too. And yet it bears constant repetition, because people forget.

In a business or government office, meaningless jargon may become so common that many otherwise normal, healthy, intelligent people think it makes sense. If you work in certain environments, you bathe in gobbledegook as it streams out of memos, reports, policy, procedures, presentations and even press releases. You yourself start writing the same jargon, confident it’s the right way to go.

And you start to participate in a group hallucination. You get this extraordinary illusion that ordinary people can understand what you are saying. (Or care.)

Here’s a classic example, the first two paragraphs on a government web page:

Scion places a high emphasis on developing strategic partnerships to build stronger science capability and ensure the delivery of worthwhile outcomes.

We have developed a diverse range of relationships with other research organisations, industry groups, and commercial businesses, both nationally and internationally, to greatly expand the potential of science-related opportunities.

Flesch-Kincaid readability score: zero. That means virtually no adult reader will be able to understand it easily.

What does the author really mean, in plain language? We can figure that out. But in the end, is it worth saying?

First figure out what you really mean, then say that. If it’s worth saying, say it in plain language. If it’s not worth saying, don’t bother.

Scion: Key Working Relationships