Writing accessible content
1st June 2006 by Liam McGee
Writing accessible content is in most cases no different to writing good content for the general user. Therefore it may be useful to lay out what we at Communis think makes for great web writing.
- Write for your audience: who is likely to be reading the page? Make sure that you are writing for them.
- Write strong headings:
- questions – “What’s So Great About Glaciers?” – they get readers to look for the answer;
- unusual statements – “Lost: One Giant Banana” – readers like surprises;
- promise of conflict – “Fierce Rivalry between Families” – readers like fights;
- news pegs – “Election Fever Hits The Town” – big current events affect your readers;
- direct address – “You Need to Know This” – readers like personal attention.
- Front-load: the first sentence or two of a piece should summarise the entire piece. Start with the conclusion and then follow with the most important supporting information. Details then follow in decreasing order of importance. For stylistic examples, see any tabloid news article.
- Chunk: convert any long piece into a series of short, self-contained topics on the same page, each with their own heading. Emphasise main points by setting them off in own sentence or short paragraph.
- Chop: ‘write long, cut short’ – once you have written a piece, go back through it and cut it by a third of its length. Do this by:
- removing subjective adjectives (and most superlatives) such as ‘great’ or ‘amazing’;
- replacing passive voice sentences with active voice ones;
- using bulleted lists;
- removing unnecessary definitions and explanations.
- Check: grammar, spelling and facts. Always have at least one other person proof your writing. Always.
Can you think of any more? Any improvements? More alliterative titles for the first two bullets? Did you spot the deliberate spelling/grammatical error? Comments welcome.