Many of the things that make for good reading offline make for terrible writing online.

When it comes to writing for the Internet, keeping material short and making it easy for readers to find information are vital. Smart Business Computing recently attended a seminar featuring Chris Nodder, a user-experience specialist at Nielsen Norman Group. What he had to say should be of interest to anyone who writes content for the Intertubes.

Nodder covered a range of material, from microcontent in links to content you to have to scroll to find (vertical scrolling is OK; horizontal scrolling: “No!”), during an all-day seminar on writing for the Web at the posh Mark Hopkins hotel in San Francisco.

One topic of discussion focused on ways to making content clearer and more accessible to readers. Nodder emphasized simplifying content; use tables and lists to describe features rather than a dense block of text, particularly for technical subjects or product details.

Source: Small Business Computing