The Chambers Desktop Guide to Writing for the Web

The Chambers Desktop is the second edition of A Simple Guide to Writing for Your Website. If Jonathan Price’s Web writing that works is the most comprehensive guide on Web writing, Susannah Ross’ Chambers Desktop Guide to Writing for the Web is undoubtly the most concise and practical one. Probably because of the author’s extensive experience in journalism and self-discipline for thoroughly reviewed writing.

I’ll try to apply here one of her strongest bits of advice: write from memory. The 20-year BBC veteran insists that we do so to better capture the essence of a story, a theory, anything in depth.

Guidelines
So here are the guidelines I remember:

- Ask yourself why and to whom you would like
to write on a particular subject
- Spend all your time thinking about what the user
might want to know on your subject rather than what
you would like to say
- Clarify the purpose of your Web content by expressing
it in no more than 10 words
- Choose a Web structure that will answer as quickly
as possible the user’s questions
- Divide you content into no more than seven
categories, in a clear, logical hierarchy
- Use the simplest, shortest words, and write
10-12 word sentences

But above all, keep in mind that good writing doesn’t come easy. Ross demonstrates her point by carefully reviewing the basics of grammar: what is the function of the verb, the noun, the adverb, the clause? This leads to a general piece of advice for Web writing: the verb is the essential part in a Web text, and should be strong enough to replace wordy nouns or adverbs.

The rest is work, practice, self-discipline. And passion for good writing.

Examples
The guide provides all sorts of examples – structure, categorization, homepage – but the series about style and grammar is particularly helpful:

German-origin words are shorter or simpler than Latin-:

“prior to” (Latin) vs. “before” (German)
“requirements” (Latin) vs. “needs” (German)
“subsequent” (Latin) vs. “later” (German)

Positive expressions are easier to understand than negative:

“does not have” => “lacks”
“does not include” => “leaves out”
“not unless ” => “only if”

Ross reminds us of some unnecessary words:

- “free gift”
- “past history”
- “meet up with”
- “merge together”
- “crisis situation”

And simpler ways of saying things:

“despite the fact” => “although”
“on a regular basis” => “regularly”
“make use of” => “use”
“if the event that” => “if”

Of course, the author discusses the usual aspects of Web writing: scannability (titles, captions, lists), metadata, inverted pyramid structure, conversational tone etc. But what makes Susannah Ross’ guide so useful and unique is that it gives, in a very handy book, a journalistic-based approach for concision and good writing for the Web.