The 10 Commandments of concise web writing
1. Write tight.
Short words, short sentences, short paragraphs. Ditch the 12 dollar words, and
prune the text down to one idea per paragraph, one thought per sentence and
generally no more than three sentences per paragraph. Remember: less is more.
2. Treat headlines like gold. Headlines have the ability to either hook or deter the reader. Ideally
they should define the page content as fully as possible with as few words as
possible. And please, there is no need to be overly-clever or ambiguous with
3. Use bulleted lists.
They are your friend. Web visitors love them and so should you. Web visitors don’t
read, they scan, and lists help them scan efficiently.
4. Get to the point quickly.
You have about one second to grab the visitors’ attention. Don’t lollygag: use the
inverted pyramid format and frontload each paragraph with the conclusions
first—then expand upon them.
5. Use an active voice
by using the subject-verb-object format—putting the subject at the start of the
sentence whenever possible (e.g., Tom bought an umbrella. Not, An umbrella was
bought by Tom).
6. Use straightforward, simple
language. Great, powerful writing is born from simplicity.
Avoid jargon, excessive vocabulary, and bureaucratic or sales-y language.
7. Say what you need to say once
and say it well. Eliminate redundancies. If you struggle to
explain your point and resort to terms like “in other words” or “in short,” you
aren’t saying it right. Regroup your thoughts and try again.
8. Stay on message.
No one loves tangents more than writers, it’s true, but web writers must
exclude indulging in interesting but unnecessary information. Resist, resist,
9. Edit, edit, edit. Don’t
become attached to your words. In fact, cut out as many of them as possible
while keeping the functionality and meaning of the text intact. I know they are
all special words to your heart—but you must learn to embrace minimalism and
10. Don’t be afraid of
punctuation. Especially periods—you know, in order to avoid
scary too-many-clauses-run-on-sentence anarchy. Yikes!