Writing Good Copy
Text readers and Web readers share few things in common. Text readers can curl up with a good book to escape to an imaginary world or scour a report to discover what's between the lines. Web readers are called surfers because they typically skim the surface, scanning pages until they find the information they need. If they don’t find it quickly, they'll go to another site that might have information more readily available.
However, Web surfers become like text readers when they need to read carefully. A Web surfer searching for in-depth information or instructions becomes a reader, either reading thoroughly on screen, or, more commonly, printing out a PDF of the text.
Web sites are more like magazines than books. Magazines offer in-depth articles and short blurbs. Sandwiched between the pages of a serious investigative article may be a page on hot holiday gifts. Magazines often include:
- short blurbs
- interesting graphics
- photos with captions
Your Web site will most likely follow the magazine model – many brief paragraphs on the surface with longer pieces of information available deeper in the site. So, instead of writing for readers, write for scanners.
You'll complete four worksheets in this section:
- Creating Chunky Text
- Writing Blurbs
- Following Basic Rules
- Writing for Search Engines