OERu/Getting started with OERu/Finding your way/Communication and Design Conventions

Writing content for the Web is a specialised skill and is quite different from writing for other media like print. The purpose of this page is to describe some principles of web content development and presentation, and to help people understand some of those differences, even if they're not web professionals (it's useful for just about everyone these days).

Know your audience

The main considerations are the fact that you cannot control the way your audience views your content, and you cannot control your audience.

On the web, your viewers will be using a variety of computer operating systems, different web browser software, different screen sizes (both in terms of number of pixels, namely the level of detail they can show in a given space (measured in "points per inch" or "points per cm"), and actual physical size, ranging from wrist watch to wall-sized screen), different fonts, as well as assistive (that only see your text, not images or the 'layout' of your content) technologies for those with vision impairments, like Braille readers.

Also, you cannot control what sort of people are looking at your content. You can't easily make any assumptions about the sorts of terminology that will be familiar to them. It's crucial to use an approach that leads from simple "general" terminology (it's hard to work out what is legitimately "general") into more specialised and specific terminology, defining terms as you go both explicitly (like "CMS, which means a website's Content Management System functionality, that allows suitably authorised people to edit content through their web browser") and by using the words in context (like "we chose to deploy the OERu CMS to make it easy for our partners to update their organisational details and course contributions").

Making every word count

Words on the web are best if you use as few as possible but no fewer. Don't dumb down your message, but don't over explain either. And chose your words carefully, always thinking about the audience you want to encourage most.

You won't be able to really control much about how the words look, namely the font or the formatting, like how long a line is, where it breaks to the next line, and things like that. Best thing to do is not make your meaning dependent on that sort of control. Instead choose short, pithy sentences, with rich meaty (but vegan-safe) words.

And we encourage you to use humour, but don't be too subtle about it. Sarcasm, for example, is hard to pick up in a purely text medium without additional 'channels' of communication like your reader being able to see your posture or facial expressions.

Define terms, minimise jargon

When specialists in a particular field create content, there is a strong temptation to use field-specific jargon - unusual words, unusual meanings for common words, or acronyms. In some cases, if it's a central or widely used term, it's worth using it, but making sure that you define the term at its first use, ideally providing examples where relevant and explaining its significance. For example (from the computer networking field):

"On the Internet, every connected computer has a unique numerical address, made up of four numbers between 0 and 255, which IT practitioners call an "IP number" or Internet Protocol number. And example (the one corresponding to this website) is 54.218.47.90. IP numbers are assigned by..."

If a term is used only incidentally, or you can achieve a similar clarity with more widely used terms, use the common terms.

Not muddying the waters

The web provides quite a few tools that attempt to give you control over the layout of your content, but those tend to require an advanced understanding of web technology. For instance, you need to understand how multiple blocks of text often represented in a "grid", like "recent news" blurbs, will look on a large, high resolution (lots of pixels) screen, as well as how they will translate to a narrow cellphone screen which, despite having a lot of pixels, is so physically narrow, that if you try to squeeze in all those blocks side by side will be too small to be readable.

Technically sophisticated web developers can use "responsive layouts" to change the organisation of text to compensate in those situations, for instance reorganising the blocks into a single vertical list that can be scrolled. But doing that well is not straightforward without a fair bit of technical understanding (and even then it can be a challenge given the proliferation of different browser software all bringing their own quirks and idiosyncrasies).

To maintain clarity, one should be very conscious and economical about adding "lines" or other graphical embellishments to content that are not directly relevant to the content being portrayed. Often this is at odds with a designer's aesthetic, but it's a very useful exercise to question oneself "is this line or this graphic adding meaning or is it just because I think it looks cool?"

Context is crucial

Although it's good to be economical with your words, make sure you use enough words. Provide context to help lead your audience into topics.

For instance, make sure you provide a line of explanation before using semantic devices like

• bullet lists or
• numbered lists.

It's easy to throw a bullet list on a page, but it's like a graphic without labelled axes - it's very hard for someone to interpret it if they don't know what you intended by it.

Work with the web, not against it

Use links to liberally. Links are a great way to keep a particular piece of content at a consistent level of detail. You can provide very helpful detailed explanations of parts of your content as separate chunks of content linked from the appropriate key words or phrases.

One thing to absolutely avoid is to avoid links that are not "semantic". That means never use "click here" as the link text. The words that make up link text should provide the context for what the link will provide. If I'm talking about web content and describe semantics