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Passive Voice Is Redeemed For Web Headings (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox)
Tags: blog-writing, grammar, seo, usability, web-writing on 2007-12-25 and saved by10 people -All Annotations (0) -About
more fromwww.useit.com
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Summary:
Active voice is best for most Web content, but using passive voice can let you front-load important keywords in headings, blurbs, and lead sentences. This enhances scannability and thus SEO effectiveness. -
When structuring a sentence, active voice ("Actor does X to Object") is usually better than passive voice ("Object has X done to it by Actor") because it more directly represents the action. As a result, readers don't have to jump through as many cognitive hoops when trying to understand what's going on.
For the same reason, it's usually better to write a positive statement ("do X") than a negative statement ("avoid Y"), and it's almost always horrible to use double negatives ("avoid not doing X"). Again, the simpler the translation between the text and the user's mental model, the easier the writing is to understand. -
Usability increases when users need fewer mental transformations to convert a sentence into actionable understanding.
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Users scan Web content in an F-pattern, and often read only the first 2 words of a paragraph. What are the first two words of my draft deck? "Yahoo Finance" — which has zero information scent for article's target audience.
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Given that users often read only a couple of words from each text element, you should reduce duplication of salient keywords.- Don't use the same initial keywords in your headline and summary. You have 4 words to make your point, so use 4 different words.
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Avoid repeating any headline words in the summary, except for the most important one or two keywords. You can repeat these halfway through the summary to reinforce them for people who scanned past them in the headline.
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Words are usually the main moneymakers on a website. Selecting the first 2 words for your page titles is probably the highest-impact ROI-boosting design decision you make in a Web project. Front-loading important keywords trumps most other design considerations.
Writing Inverted Pyramids in Cyberspace (Alertbox)
Tags: blog-writing, usability, web-writing, writing on 2007-12-25 and saved by5 people -All Annotations (0) -About
more fromwww.useit.com
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Journalists have long adhered to the inverse approach: start the article by
telling the reader the conclusion ("After long debate, the Assembly voted to
increase state taxes by 10 percent"), follow by the most important supporting
information, and end by giving the background. This style is known as the
inverted pyramid for the simple reason that it turns the traditional
pyramid style around. Inverted-pyramid writing is useful for newspapers
because readers can stop at any time and will still get the most important
parts of the article. -
On the Web, the inverted pyramid becomes even more important since we know
from several user studies that users don't scroll,(*) so they will very
frequently be left to read only the top part of an article.
Writing for the Web (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox)
Tags: blog-writing, usability, web-writing on 2007-12-25 and saved by4 people -All Annotations (0) -About
more fromwww.useit.com
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Hypertext Structure
Make text short without sacrificing depth of content by splitting the information up into multiple nodes connected by hypertext links. Each page can be brief and yet the full hyperspace can contain much more information than would be feasible in a printed article. Long and detailed background information can be relegated to secondary pages; similarly, information of interest to a minority of readers can be made available through a link without penalizing those readers who don't want it. -
split the information into coherent chunks that each focus on a certain topic.
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Each hypertext page should be written according to the
"inverse pyramid" principle and start with a short conclusion so that users can get the gist of the page even if they don't read all of it.
10 Ways to Eliminate the Echo Chamber ~ Chris Pirillo
how to be original and creative in blogging
Tags: advice, blog-writing, blogging, blogosphere, critical-thinking, cyber-culture, echo-chamber, writing on 2007-12-25 and saved by3 people -All Annotations (0) -About
more fromchris.pirillo.com
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When you force yourself to do something that you don’t understand, the results might be messy - but they’ll be genuine.
Coding Horror: Thirteen Blog Clichés
Tags: advise, blog-writing, blogging, writing on 2007-12-25 and saved by5 people -All Annotations (0) -About
more fromwww.codinghorror.com
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The Useless Calendar Widget
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Random Images Arbitrarily Inserted In Text
One of the cardinal rules of web writing is to avoid large blocks of text. There are plenty of excellent web writing guides that exhort you to break up your text, using bullets, numbered lists, quotes, paragraph breaks, images-- anything, anything to avoid creating an intimidating wall of dense, impenetrable text. -
As the old adage goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. But you
should no more insert a random image into your writing than you would insert a thousand
random words into your writing. I don't care how beautiful your photographs are, it's a terrible, irresponsible practice that distracts and harms readability. -
No Information on the Author
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Blogs work because they're simple. When we
clutter up our blogs with a zillion widgets,
features, and add-ons, we're destroying an essential part of what makes blogs worthwhile.

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And do your readers really want to see pictures of the last 10 visitors to your
blog? -
Citing your references and influences is a great and necessary thing, but obsessively
listing every single blog you read-- the so-called "blogroll"-- is just noise. -
The reality is that tag cloud visualizations are chaotic, noisy,
and unusable. Keep the tagging, lose the cloud. A simple sorted list of tags, along
with the number of posts associated with each tag, is much more effective. -
It is almost never in the reader's interest to see advertisements, so my advice is to tread very lightly, and be respectful of your audience. Bad advertising is so prevalent that if you take the time to advertise responsibly, you may find that readers appreciate you for it.
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This Ain't Your Diary
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It's OK to be yourself; at some level, it is a cult of personality: people are reading not only because your content
is useful to them, but because they like you. It's normal to inject a regular dose of yourself into the conversation.
But like Tabasco sauce and other powerful seasonings, a little YOU goes a long way. A really long way. Write accordingly. -
Sorry I Haven't Written in a While
If you haven't posted anything new to your blog in a while, don't waste our time with apologies. Just write! The best apology is new and improved content. Maybe with a wee bit more consistency this time, though. -
Blogging About Blogging
I find meta-blogging -- blogging about blogging -- incredibly boring. -
if everyone else is talking about it, that means you should
avoid talking about it. Switch things up. Seek out uncommon sites with
unique information. Dig down to original sources -
If all you can find to talk about is what's already popular, you're not trying hard enough. Form your own opinion. Do your own research. Go out of your way to blaze a new trail and create something we haven't already seen hundreds of times before.
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Top (n) Lists
Yes, exactly like this one.
The problem with Top (n) Lists is that they become
a substitute for critical thinking, -
No Comments Allowed
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The sum total of community contributions is far more useful than any one thing you'll ever write.
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Besides, It's an open secret in the blogging community that the comments are often better than the original blog entry itself.
Notation: * = Private bookmark and comment|… = Clipping [?] | … = Public highlight [?]
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