Letting Go of the Words, Second Edition: Writing Web Content that Works (Interactive Technologies)
Web site design and development continues to become more sophisticated. An important part of this maturity originates with well-laid-out and well-written content. Ginny Redish is a world-renowned expert on information design and how to produce clear writing in plain language for the web. All of the invaluable information that she shared in the first edition is included with numerous new examples. New information on content strategy for web sites, search engine optimization (SEO), and social medi
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FORGET ABOUT IT!!,
Are you waking up at night worrying about strategy and tactics? If you are, then this book is for you! Author Janice (Ginny) Redish has done an outstanding job of writing a second edition of a book on how to help you have great conversations through your web site, mobile app, social media, and whatever future innovations encourage interactions between you and others.
Author Redish, begins by showing you how to have good conversations through your web site. In addition, the author delves into why planning your content is critical for apps, web sites, individual web topics, blogs, social media messages, and everything you write. She then discusses how to integrate content and design from the beginning. The author then, shows you how to consider the entire site. She continues by looking at the size of your site; if it is large enough, then you may need pathway pages between the home page and the information people want. In addition, the author tackles four important guidelines: Think information, not document; divide your content thoughtfully; consider how much to put on one web page; and, use PDFs sparingly and only for good reasons.
She then continues to focus on not hogging the conversation within a single web topic. Next, the author reminds you how to combine labels with more information. Then, she shows you how to choose a good heading style: questions, statement, verb phrases, etc. The author continues by looking at how to write the paragraphs, sentences, and words of your web content. In addition, she encourages you to use numbered lists for instructions as much as possible. Next, the author warns that you should not make program or product names links by themselves. She then describes what makes illustrations work well, or not work well. The author continues by showing you how to negotiate successful reviews and edits. Finally, she shows you how to do usability testing of the content.
This most excellent book will help you create great content. Perhaps more importantly, this book shows you how to meet your business goals by satisfying your site visitors’ conversations through usability testing.
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|Indispensable Resource!,
I have been a huge fan of Ginny’s Letting Go of the Words since the first edition as a one-stop resource for my eLearning content development team. We even led an internal workshop around the content of the book, as it is jam packed with best practices for writing for online viewers. This new edition builds on the first with updated research and examples, and is even more needed and welcome.
We find many of the new generation workforce woefully unaware of what our firm considers the most basic rules of writing – understanding the needs of the reader, using active voice, creating a hierarchy of useful headings, paring down the amount of content to fit the delivery medium … This is especially true of new team members who come to us through a technical or graphic design track, but even degreed writers can be missing key foundational online writing skills. This book is an indispensable tool for filling in those gaps, and level-setting the entire team.
Whether you are tasked with writing for web sites, marketing, eLearning, or business portals, you would be hard pressed to find a more complete and useful primer.
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|The Best Publication on Writing for the Web,
Writing for the web is an incredibly challenging process to do well. The Internet now contains in excess of 1 trillion gigabytes of data or 3 million times the amount of content produced in all of human history! Searching for and finding what one would define as engaging and remarkable information is a huge challenge for many people the world over.
Ginny’s book does an exemplary job of explaining in plain language how to write web content that works – for the user, for the organization, for everyone! In a world where less truly is more Ginny adds more details in fewer pages than the first edition including examples on SEO, usability testing, and Content Strategy.
This is the go-to publication for any individual or organization interested in learning to write content that creates that great experience people are seeking online today!
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