Taking a Position on Brevity - Page 9
January 25, 2002
Please take a position on one of the following topics.
(1) YALE ON THE DANGERS OF CUTTING TOO MUCH
The Yale Medical School site offers lots of advice to people
creating Web pages at
http://info.med.yale.edu/caim/manual, in the section devoted
to Editorial Style. Lynch and Horton, the authors, urge concision
but warn against shortening text too much because, "There's
enough dumb stuff on the Web already."
- How would you describe their prose style?
- Do you think they expect you to read all their advice, or
even a single Web page of their recommendations online?
- Does their own prose work for you when you read it on the
screen? Could it be improved if they wrote more briefly?
Give us enough snippets and examples to understand why you take
the position you do.
(2) NEWS IS NEWS
Most of the news items displayed on Web sites reflect a long
tradition of paper journalism, condensing the main story in the
first paragraph, then going into the details in a series of
fairly short, follow-up paragraphs, and wading into the lengthier
descriptions down at the bottom, where the editor can cut them if
space is limited. Journalism, then, offers us a paper model of
concision. Does the standard "reporter's voice" work as well
online?
Reuters and the Associated Press prepare their stories for
distribution to print newspapers, and then, without rewriting,
resell the stories to Web sites such as
Lycos and
America Online.
Similarly, the New York Times
and USA Today combine
wire-service feeds with their own stories, pouring the material
onto the Web sites without rewriting for the screen.
Examining the writing on one or all of these sites, please take a
position on one of the following questions:
- How would you characterize the style?
- Is the prose tight enough to read well online?
- Do you think that our familiarity with the style of print
journalism makes us accept that same style online?
- What do you see as the purpose of the different sites, from
their owner's point of view?
- Why do you imagine users look up stories on these sites? What
different purposes do they have ?
Please quote specific examples of prose to show what you mean,
and why you take the position that you do.
(3) SLATE ... WHEN USERS WANT MORE THAN A BLANK
Brevity matters—but only when the user wants information. Writing
short can help your users pick up facts, ideas, instructions,
trouble-shooting advice, recommendations, and data in tables. But
users also go to the Internet to be entertained, inspired,
aroused, even inflamed.
Webzines, hobbyist sites, and marketing pages appeal to the
imagination. And when looking for an emotional buzz, users seem
to prefer a looser, more subtly shaded, intimate, even
passionateprose. They want to get an impression of the writer—a
sense of personality — rather than "seeing through" the
prose to the facts beneath.
Consider several articles (preferably by one person) on
Microsoft's webzine, Slate at
http://www.slate.com/
- How would you characterize the style of these pieces? (Quote
enough for us to see what you mean).
- Is this style working for you, when you browse on-screen?
When you read for meaning on-screen? Tell us what you are after,
when you read these pieces. For instance, in what way are your
aims different than when you go to a corporate site to find a
solution to your software problem?
Given these purposes, do you find the Slate prose style
reasonably easy to read on the screen? Or would you prefer to
print the pieces out and read them on paper?
Express your own idea on:
HotText@yahoogroups.com
Subscribe:
HotText-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
Unsubscribe:
HotText-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
Visit:
http://www.WebWritingThatWorks.com
Beware of Cutting So Far That You Make the Text Ambiguous - Page 8
Hot Text: Web Writing that Works
|
