Web Publishing Resources

Web Writers Resources

Resources for New Authors

Web:

Jakob Nielson's Web site has become a sort of usability bible. His consulting firm has extensively studied writing for the Web. Just search his site using the keyword, "writing."
Applying Writing Guidelines to Web Pages

While this article suggests that education debilitates writers (not true), it has some good stuff in it --
http://www.wordbiz.com/archive/copywriting_tips.shtml

Gerry McGovern is a web consultant-good guidelines, but don't take his specifications too seriously. http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2003/nt_2003_04_28_writing_1.htm

Passive vs. Active, very important on the web:
http://www.grokdotcom.com/thinkactive.htm

And if you liked that one, there's a whole riff on verbs:
http://www.grokdotcom.com/pumpupyourverbs.htm

Books:

Elements of Style, Strunk & White. The bible of writing.

Don't Make Me Think! Stephen Krug. The bible of web communications.

The Associated Press Stylebook, Norm Goldstein, ed.

Content Strategy for the Web, Kristina Halvorson. The newest thinking on best practices for creating, organizing and managing web content.

This is a list of examples from our Web site of elements of good writing.
  1. Be succinct - Jakob Nielson's site has a good reference to this point.
  2. Respect your interface (land your content above "the fold")
  3. Write short paragraphs
  4. Make copy scannable
  5. Paraphrase your hyperlinks
  6. Create layers of information
  7. Use page anchors on long pages