Course

This enjoyable course is perfect for all non-technical writers, and is a practical way to solve the problem of inaccessible documents and PDFs throughout your organization.

With some training, most staff writers can quite easily make their own documents accessible, and even convert them into accessible PDFs.

This course outlines the steps required for any version of MS Word or OOo Writer, and advises when Adobe Acrobat will be needed. Practical guidelines for dealing with legacy PDFs and publishing PDFs online are also provided.

What you'll learn from this short online course

1. Why all documents need to be accessible, and why government organizations have problems with PDFs
2. How to create an accessible document in MS Word or OOo Writer.
3. How to convert a document into an accessible PDF and publish it online.
4. What to do with legacy PDFs.

How this short course works

Audience: No IT knowledge required. For general staff who write as part of their job. Also for web developers, web teams, intranet teams and content publishers.
Time and place: Start any time. Study online: your place, your pace.
Duration: About 1 hour's study. You can access the course for 1 month.
Qualification: A PDF Certificate when you pass the test.
Type of course: Short online professional development course; self study; included in the Diploma of Accessible Content.

Catalogue of all our courses
Course prices and group discounts
Course author: Rachel McAlpine

This short online course helps web content authors avoid common blunders caused when using a content management system (CMS) or when migrating web content from MS Word to a CMS.

Good formatting in website writing makes your content look professional. However, it also influences the search results, readability, and accessibility of web content.

What you'll learn from this short online course

1. How formatting text correctly can provide structure, consistency, order, and white space in web content.
2. Clever ways to increase white space and ease your online readers.
3. The hazards of WYSIWYGs,and how to format content successfully in a CMS.
4. The terrors of tables. Find out why you need to treat tables with special care when writing web content.
5. Formatting in MS Word: making migration of content from MS Word to a web site easier, faster and safer.

How Contented courses work

Time and place: Start any time. Study online: your place, your pace.
Duration: About 1 hour's study. You can access the course for 1 month.
Qualification: A PDF Certificate when you pass the test.
Type of course: Short course: not in the Diploma of Web Content.
Catalogue of all our courses
Course prices and group discounts
Course author: Rachel McAlpine

Are you doing the right thing when you use images and graphs in web or intranet content? Are they useful? Are they accessible? After doing this short course for web content authors you'll feel confident about handling these challenges.

What you'll learn from this short online course

1. Why ALT-text is so important: without this little piece of coding, many people simply won't see your images.
2. When ALT-text is not enough. Some images are so complex that you need to explain them to certain readers, for example the partially blind.
3. How to use the right graphs and charts: make them fit the purpose and the page.
4. Tips for graphs and charts: valuable advice that web content authors need to know.
5. Why you need to test graphs and charts online, not just on paper.
6. How to write text equivalents in two parts. It's easy when you know how!

How Contented courses work

Time and place: Start any time. Study online: your place, your pace.
Duration: About 1 hour's study. You can access the course for 1 month.
Qualification: A PDF Certificate when you pass the test.
Type of course: Short course: included in the Diploma of Web Content.
Catalogue of all our courses
Course prices and group discounts
Course author: Rachel McAlpine

Headlines are probably the single most important piece of content on any web or intranet page. Good headlines catch the eye, get the message across, improve search results, inspire trust and boost sales. But poor headlines confuse and frustrate your readers.

So if you've only got time to improve one part of your web content, improve the headlines! There's a huge payoff in usability and search results. What you learn in this course will improve all your business writing, not just web content.

What you'll learn from this short online course

1. Why headlines on the web are so important. How headlines are recycled, and how a great headline grabs attention and improves search results.
2. How to write an excellent page headline—one that works for people and search engines.
3. Three classic rules for headlines.
4. How to figure what type of content is on each page, and which style of headline will suit best.
5. How to polish your headlines.

How Contented courses work

Time and place: Start any time. Study online: your place, your pace.
Duration: About 1 hour's study. You can access the course for 1 month.
Qualification: A PDF Certificate when you pass the test.
Type of course: Short course: included in the Diploma of Web Content.
Catalogue of all our courses
Course prices and group discounts
Course author: Rachel McAlpine

Pay online to extend your access period to a Contented course or courses for an additional month.

Understand what keywords are, and why they are so important in your web content and other documents. Keywords help people classify, find, and communicate information.

Learn how to choose keywords and use them for instant communication, niche marketing and better search results.

What you'll learn from this short course

1. What keywords are, where they are and what they do.
2. How keywords work in search engines to categorize and rank web pages. The relative merits of longer and shorter keywords, and how long-tail keywords work.
3. How to choose keywords.
4. How to use keywords in your web content.
5. How to use keywords in other useful places. The right keywords in the right spots can improve your search rankings and the findability of your content.

How Contented courses work

Time and place: Start any time. Study online: your place, your pace.
Duration: About 1 hour's study. You can access the course for 1 month.
Qualification: A PDF Certificate when you pass the test.
Type of course: Short course: not in the Diploma of Web Content.
Catalogue of all our courses
Course prices and group discounts
Course author: Rachel McAlpine

If you write, you write web content—whether your field is articles, elearning, blogging, online marketing copy or intranet content development.

And if you write web content, you need to know your online audience. They're different! They have some very peculiar problems. If you know what the problems are, you'll know how to help.

What you'll learn from this short course

1. How to write for readers under pressure: stressed, impatient, skeptical and disoriented.
2. How to edit web content for selective, active readers
3. How to edit web content for all readers, regardless of their computer set-up.
4. How to edit web content for readers with different physical abilities.

How Contented courses work

Time and place: Start any time. Study online: your place, your pace.
Duration: About 1 hour's study. You can access the course for 1 month.
Qualification: A PDF Certificate when you pass the test.
Type of course: Short course: included in the Diploma of Web Content.
Catalogue of all our courses
Course prices and group discounts
Course author: Rachel McAlpine

Punctuation errors can annoy readers and even damage business relationships. Learn how to avoid most of the common errors, and stop worrying about punctuation. Many English punctuation guidelines differ between countries, industries and organizations. To clarify these, we give international guidelines.

What you'll learn from this short course

1. The general principles behind all punctuation
2. The correct use of apostrophes and quote marks
3. The correct use of full stops and commas
4. How to use colons, semicolons, dots and dashes
5. Conventions for using capital letters, underlining and italics.

How Contented courses work

Time and place: Start any time. Study online: your place, your pace.
Duration:About 1 hour's study. You can access the course for 1 month.
Qualification: A PDF Certificate when you pass the test.
Type of course: Short course: not in the Diploma of Web Content.
Catalogue of all our courses
Course prices and group discounts
Course author: Rachel McAlpine

Relax: you don’t need to know all the grammar rules in the universe to write correctly! Learn some key grammar rules in one or two hours, and discover simple ways to avoid making mistakes. This course will raise your confidence: you can write correct business English.

What you'll learn from this short course

1. Facts and myths about grammar: why your teacher and your granny may have been wrong.
2. How to keep sentences shapely and well-structured.
3. How to structure lists correctly.
4. Which and that: use these words correctly for clear communication.
5. How to make all parts agree: verbs, pronouns, subjects and objects.
6. How to ensure you always write correctly, even when you may not know the rules.

How Contented courses work

Time and place: Start any time. Study online: your place, your pace.
Duration: About 1 hour's study. You can access the course for 1 month.
Qualification: A PDF Certificate when you pass the test.
Type of course: Short course: not in the Diploma of Web Content.
Catalogue of all our courses
Course prices and group discounts
Course author: Rachel McAlpine

You know you shouldn't write click here... but what should you write instead? And where should you place hyperlinks on a web page (or in any document)? Discover many valuable techniques and the principles behind them.

What you'll learn from this short online course

1. How hyperlinks power the internet, influencing accessibility, usability and search results. Good reasons and bad reasons for inserting links.
2. The best places for hyperlinks. Links in the wrong places can confuse your readers and stop them reading.
3. How to write great link-text: ideal content, words and length. How to show people exactly what they'll find when they click.
4. How to avoid giving nasty surprises when you link to unexpected places or files.

How Contented courses work

Time and place: Start any time. Study online: your place, your pace.
Duration: About 1 hour's study. You can access the course for 1 month.
Qualification: A PDF Certificate when you pass the test.
Type of course: Short course: included in the Diploma of Web Content.
Catalogue of all our courses
Course prices and group discounts
Course author: Rachel McAlpine

This is one of two short online courses about the principles of plain language (in this case plain English). An ideal course for for web content developers and all business writers, it shows how to write with purpose, structure and conciseness.

What you'll learn from this short online course

1. What plain language is and why we use it.
2. How to check your document's readability, and make it easy to read.
3. How to structure a document for the reader's benefit. What to put first, second and last; what to include, what to leave out, how much to write.
4. How to write concisely: crucial techniques that save you from writing wordy, rambling and confusing documents.

How Contented courses work

Time and place: Start any time. Study online: your place, your pace.
Duration: 1–2 hours study. You can access the course for 1 month.
Qualification: A PDF Certificate when you pass the test.
Type of course: Short course: included in the Diploma of Web Content.
Catalogue of all our courses
Course prices and group discounts
Course author: Rachel McAlpine

This is the second of two courses on plain language skills from Contented.com. It trains you to use words, sentences, lists, verbs and grammar that are easy to understand—and correct.

Clarity is the goal. If your message isn't clear, you have wasted everyone's time. You can't thrive in the workplace without this knowledge.

What you'll learn from this short online course

1. Choose clear, simple words that are familiar to your intended audience, and avoid using gobbledegook.
2. Use you, a very special word: it gets your readers involved and makes your writing clearer.
3. Delight your readers with short, straightforward sentences and lists, and avoid convoluted prose.
4. Use punchy, positive verbs that bring your message alive.
5. Change your own bad grammar habits.

How Contented courses work

Time and place: Start any time. Study online: your place, your pace.
Duration: About 1 hour's study. You can access the course for 1 month.
Qualification: A PDF Certificate when you pass the test.
Type of course: Short course: included in the Diploma of Web Content.
Catalogue of all our courses
Course prices and group discounts
Course author: Rachel McAlpine

Learn how to write page summaries that are clear, appropriate and useful—not only for your readers, but also for search engines. The techniques you learn will improve all your business writing, not just web content.

What you'll learn from this short online course

1. Why every web page must start with a summary and what happens if you forget.
2. How to structure a page in chunks, and how this benefits your reader.
3. Five types of page summary: examples and options.
4. Three bad ways to start a web page: no start, a slow start and a false start.
5. The power of summaries in search results, how to write a 16-word summary that draws visitors to your page.

How Contented courses work

Time and place: Start any time. Study online: your place, your pace.
Duration: About 1 hour's study. You can access the course for 1 month.
Qualification: A PDF Certificate when you pass the test.
Type of course: Short course: included in the Diploma of Web Content.
Catalogue of all our courses
Course prices and group discounts
Course author: Rachel McAlpine

Your business depends on a lively blog—with a purpose. Success, credibility, money and enjoyment: it all starts here, when you learn the secrets of strategic blogging.

What you'll learn from this short online course

1. Why you need a blog in your online marketing plan. How a great blog attracts customers, boosts your credibility and impresses search engines.
2. How to develop a sound business blog strategy. How your strategy can keep you on track—and keeps your customers coming back.
3. Which types of blogs are influential. Learn how to write blog posts that drive you towards your goals.
4. The universal guidelines for bloggers. These tips are like gold.

How Contented courses work

Time and place: Start any time. Study online: your place, your pace.
Duration: About 1 hour's study. You can access the course for 1 month.
Qualification: A PDF Certificate when you pass the test.
Type of course: Short course: included in the Diploma of Web Content.
Catalogue of all our courses
Course prices and group discounts
Course author: Rachel McAlpine

Test product

Are you puzzled by Twitter, yet realise you should be using it for business, professional, government or community purposes? Are you already on Twitter but want better results? Do you need to microblog on a social intranet?

This course shows you the potential of Twitter, and how to make the most of its strengths. With many examples and practical tips, you'll systematically learn how Twitter can benefit you, the best topics to tweet about, how to compose tweets that people respond to, and how to manage the effect of your Twitter account (or any microblog).

Incidentally, we think you'll enjoy the gorgeous bird theme and occasional melodic bird songs in this course—real tweets from real birds. You'll discover that human and avian tweets have much in common.

What you'll learn from this short online course

1. Strategic Twitter decisions: make good decisions about your purpose and methods; understand how microblogging can help your business.
2. What to tweet about: topics worth tweeting, and various types of public and private tweets.
3. How to write for Twitter: learn to write retweetable tweets, gaining new followers and happy customers. Write tweets that are concise (and brief), courteous, correct and concrete.
4. Manage the big picture: monitor and control the range, balance and pace of the messages you send on Twitter.

How Contented courses work

Time and place: Start any time. Study online: your place, your pace.
Duration: About 1 hour's study. You can access the course for 1 month.
Qualification: A PDF Certificate when you pass the test.
Type of course: Short course: included in the Diploma of Web Content.
Complete list of courses
Cost of Contented courses
Course author: Rachel McAlpine

If you write web content, you have a lot of influence over search results. Learn how to write pages that rank high in search results and attract the right audience.

What you'll learn from this short online course

1. How writers influence search results. The impact of words on search engine ranking.
2. How to put keywords in key places, combining art and science.
3. How to write a search engine page title—the title that appears on the search results page.
4. How to give pages a special tune-up for search engines. And how this important skill can make every document you write easier to find and easier to read—not just web content.

How Contented courses work

Time and place: Start any time. Study online: your place, your pace.
Duration: About 1 hour's study. You can access the course for 1 month.
Qualification: A PDF Certificate when you pass the test.
Type of course: Short course: included in the Diploma of Web Content.
Catalogue of all our courses
Course prices and group discounts
Course author: Rachel McAlpine

Whether short or long, reports go wrong when you rush into writing them. Learn to think, plan and structure business and government reports before you start writing. Then you’ll write the report that will satisfy your most important reader.

Take this course if you write reports at work or as a consultant, or if you supervise staff who write reports. Give all your staff specific, practical, guidelines for researching, thinking, planning, writing and editing reports, and immediately see those reports improve.

What you'll learn from this short online course

1. The 7 stages of report writing: approach the task systematically and efficiently.
2. How to structure a report for the reader: understand basic sections and order them in the most appropriate way.
3. How to write an executive summary: the most important part of any report.
4. How to edit a report and test its quality.
5. Meditation report: a case study.

When you have finished this course, you will receive two bonuses. First, a model report that relates to a case study in the course. Second, the Contented Quality Assurance tool for report writing: this is a detailed spreadsheet that enables you to evaluate reports according to 50 criteria. This tool is valuable for workplace development, staff training and enterprise communication.

How Contented courses work

Time and place: Start any time. Study online: your place, your pace.
Duration: About 1 hour's study. You can access the course for 1 month.
Qualification: A PDF Certificate when you pass the test.
Type of course: Short course: not in the Diploma of Web Content.
Catalogue of all our courses
Course prices and group discounts
Course author: Rachel McAlpine