Topic: Writing
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Your About Page Is a Robot
Everyone has one. No one likes to talk about it. No, not that. It's your About page, and it needs a little love. ALA's Erin Kissane guides you through a beautiful journey of self-discovery.
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Gentle Reader, Stay Awhile; I Will Be Faithful
Bloggers and copywriters take heed: it takes more than daily publication to build relationships. Amber Simmons provides advice on engaging readers and keeping them coming back.
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Attack of the Zombie Copy
You’ve seen them around the web, these zombie sentences. They’re not hard to recognize: syntax slack and drooling, clauses empty of everything but a terrible hunger for human brains. Here’s how to fight back.
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Calling All Designers: Learn to Write!
You know all that copy that goes around your forms and in your confirmation e-mails? Who's writing it? Derek Powazek explains why it's important for user-interface designers to sharpen up their writing skills.
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A Case for Web Storytelling
In our attention to style and technology, we often overlook a vital element in the web design mix: narrative voice.
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How to Write a Better Weblog
Great writing can’t be taught, but bad writing can be avoided. Mahoney shares tips to enhance the writing on your personal site, blog, journal, etc.
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10 Tips on Writing the Living Web
Your information architecture is as smooth, clear, and inviting as a lake. Your design rocks. Your code works. But what keeps readers coming back is compelling writing that’s continually fresh and new. Updating daily content can challenge the most dedicated scribe or site owner. Mark Bernstein’s ten tips will help you keep the good words (and readers) coming.
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Typography Matters
It’s a style thing. It’s a usability thing. It’s a tricky thing for large content sites and a step up for independents. It’s typographically correct punctuation on the web, and ALA’s Erin Kissane makes the case for it.
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Evolving Client Content
Content management systems are only as good as the content they manage. Garrity explores the care and feeding of low-budget clients who need high-quality content.
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The Art of Topless Dancing and Information Design
Creating a web site makes for all sorts of strange working relationships. What does an information designer have to do to get a little cooperation?
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Beyond Usability and Design: The Narrative Web
Crafting a narrative web: To succeed profoundly, Bernstein says, websites must go beyond usability and design, deeply engaging readers by turning their journeys through the site into rich, memorable, narrative experiences.
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Why Are You Here?
Whether we’re designing experimental sites or keeping an online diary, we go to the web in search of meaning. Will we find it? Or will we build it ourselves?
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A Fairy, a Low-Fat Bagel, and a Sack of Hammers
Never underestimate the importance of words on the web.
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Language: The Ultimate User Interface
Words. Language. Meaning. They’re a nutritious part of your complete website. So why do so many webmakers treat language like an afterthought? Julia Hayden explores ways to make words work.
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Helping Your Visitors: a State of Mind
Even the simplest website is harder to figure out than a catalog or magazine. We all know how to “use” a catalog: start at the front cover and keep turning the pages. But with every new site we visit, we have to “learn” how it works, how its “pages” turn, how to find what we’re looking for. Text that takes visitors’ needs into account can help guide them through the maze.
