you, and customers refer you.

Larger companies have dedicated editors for web copy. These folks understand the golden

rules of brevity and clarity. Unfortunately, these wise companies are the minority, so it is

important that web designers, information architects, and others involved with the project

understand what makes words work well so they can collaborate with the copywriter to

produce the most reader-friendly messaging.

Provide the whole story

Don’t assume people know what you do, how you do it, where you are, or when you

started. Providing all this information offers people the whole picture of your company.

Leaving out a key piece of the puzzle just annoys visitors and puts them off going any fur-

ther. For instance, a web page describing the services of the company should be rich with

detail, whether marketing copy, testimonials, or illustrations. Failing to adequately inform

readers about what the company does and its methodologies results in only one thing: less

interest.

Short paragraphs

The print medium provides designers tremendous creative freedom. If they want 2-inch

columns, text set at 8 points and the background a light gray, there’s not a darn thing the

reader can do about it. This flexibility in design accommodates different content styles as

well; our example of carefully designed columns would handily fit denser type and longer,

multi-sentence paragraphs.

The Internet ignores all constants. Text size is dictated by the user, and long paragraphs of

text can quickly become unwieldy on a wide monitor, causing reading speed and informa-

tion retention to plummet. Because of this unpredictability, the best web content is writ-

ten like newspaper copy: short paragraphs that focus on one thought and rarely exceed

three sentences. This fast-paced style organizes thoughts into easily digestible chunks, and

helps the eye travel from block to block through the copious whitespace.

So how long is a paragraph on the Web? A 50-word paragraph is reasonable; shorter is

better. It has been demonstrated over and over again that readers scan web content

quickly, rarely lingering to read and fully digest the information. Short paragraphs oblige

this pattern.

Bullets

Like short paragraphs, bullets help readers lightly graze on content to help determine

whether they’re in the right place. Here are some general guidelines: