Most knowledge workers are likely to write content for web sites or intranets from time to time. Subject experts in every field publish directly online. And all that content has to be accessible, for so many reasons.

Intranet content must also be accessible: staff are citizens too!

Problems, problems. How are these non-technical people going to make their own web content accessible? The decentralised style of web publishing means it’s no longer reasonable to expect the web team to clean up after the writers have written. (If it ever was.)

Well known chicken-and-egg facts about knowledge workers who write web content:

• Content writers are not necessarily adept with technology.
• WCAG 2.0 accessibility guidelines are written for ICT practitioners, not writers.
• Writers aren’t likely to comply with guidelines they don’t understand.
• But certain accessibility guidelines require writers to understand and follow them: it’s their responsibility.

It’s a vicious circle, an infinite Escher loop, a Gordian knot: reluctant learners thwarted by guidelines that might as well have been written in Klingon, from their point of view.

“Text alternatives are a primary way for making information accessible because they can be rendered through any sensory modality…”

“The human language of each passage or phrase in the content can be programmatically determined except for proper names…”

ICT staff can’t and shouldn’t be responsible for all compliance. And while the current WCAG 2.0 guidelines are easier to understand than WCAG 1.0, the ones that apply to writers need interpreting.

So I guess that’s a job for us. We’ll run a series of blog posts dedicated to this topic, starting next week.

Here’s an easy rule of thumb when you’re writing at work: never write a sentence longer than 21 words.

OK, it’s extreme. But it will often get you out of trouble.

(Before you explode, let me remind you that phrases containing capital letters can be treated as a single “word” in this situation. Phrases like “Prime Minister of Great Britain” or “Department of Housing and Development”. People read them in one gulp, like a single word.)

The 21-word limit is a natural one. That’s roughly 7 phrases, at which point humans tend to run out of short term memory. Readers can’t remember how your sentence began. Even you can’t remember how your sentence began. What a mess.

The danger point occurs at around 21 words: that’s when your sentence risks spinning out of control.

If you are having trouble writing a particular sentence, it’s probably too long. Just chop it into two or more sentences. Or shorten the sentence by removing unnecessary words.

Last week Rachel had a Significant Birthday, so we’re giving you a birthday present.

All you have to do is enrol yourself (or a group) in our Diploma in Web Content before midnight, 19 March 2010.

With every enrolment before the deadline we’ll send a terrific free e-book worth USD17.00.

“Write Me A Web Page, Elsie!” (abridged, PDF) contains 8 of the 21 chapters in the popular paper version. These chapters are all highly relevant to the 10 courses in our Diploma in Web Content. It’s a mini-textbook, with tons of up-to-date, practical and entertaining advice on how to write web content.

Until now, only a few people have received this ebook, and it certainly wasn’t free.

Act now! Either contact us on sales@contented.com
or purchase a Diploma for one person online

I find writing books easy and fun, but writing a book title terribly painful. (This is Rachel talking, by the way.) And so much depends on the title—sales, for instance! By sheer luck, my latest book has a pretty good title, but it went through the usual hair-raising cycle.

1. While I was writing, the book had a working title: “Mrs Palin Reads a Naughty Story”.
2. I got used to it and came dangerously close to using this misguided title for real.
3. I user-tested the title on friends. Someone asked, “But what’s the sub-title?” Good question.
4. Just in time I got some radical advice: rip out the first chapter. Result: new title: “Scarlet Heels”, sub-title: “26 Stories About Sex”.

Does this remind you of editorial processes in your workplace? I figure since I wrote this book all alone for my own amusement, the sloppy development of a title was all part of the fun. But in the workplace, better not leave such things to chance!

Available from good New Zealand bookstores real-world or online:
ccpress.info/scarletheels.htm

Do we provide in-house training in writing for the web? Not any more.

Recently an email arrived from a large non-profit organisation in Colorado Springs. That’s a long way from Wellington, New Zealand. Could we provide 2 days of in-house training for their staff, on readability and plain language? Hm, let me think about that for about 10 seconds…

Accidentally I wrote rather a long email in reply. Let me share the pertinent bits.

I used to do in-house training in several countries including China, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore. However, I came to realise there was a better way. Face-to-face training internationally is very expensive and the administration is also a burden. Getting all the appropriate staff to one venue at a specific time is difficult. These factors mean that fewer staff can be trained, and therefore often the training is wasted.

So Alice and I developed the CONTENTED Diploma in Web Content — a model that isn’t just cheaper for training large numbers of scattered staff: it’s also more effective. This is what we recommend in your situation.

Many large organisations such as the Asian Development Bank have seized the opportunity to train 100 staff for the same price as a one day face-to-face in-house course. Like your organisation, the Bank has employees working all over the world: our online training brings huge advantages when the workforce is scattered.

The Diploma (as you know) includes training both in readability and plain language. This is reinforced by every module, especially the editing module. The standard of general business writing improves — not just web content writing.

If you want training to be more personal, we can suggest some fun, easy ways for you to do this in-house. Then staff can get a buzz from doing something communally (as they do from a conventional in-house course.)

So my answer to your questions: my face-to-face training — if I went to Colorado — would be prohibitively expensive — but we can provide a much better alternative! Alice and I strongly recommend that you enrol a group in the Diploma. This will solve your training problems — time, cost, content, convenience, logistics and results. It’s not just different from face-to-face training: in many circumstances, it can be better.

I hope you take the plunge: we make online training easy, fun and rewarding, and you’ll be in good company.

Alice and I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Best wishes

Rachel

Photo: Rachel training staff at the Buddhist Institute, Phnom Penh, in 2004. Those days are gone.

It’s tempting to write what you need to say. That’s good, if you’re writing a book or a poem. That’s bad, if you’re writing a web page or any document that is supposed to be helpful or even useful to the public.

Here’s an extreme example from the small web site of Pestoff Animal Control Products.

What 99% of readers want from the home page is, I presume, information about Pestoff products and an easy way to buy them. Reasonable?

Instead, this is what we read on the home page.

Thank you for visiting us.

Our site is dedicated to informing you about our highly successful products, services, distributors and clients. This is the launch page for taking you around our site and providing you with information about our business.

Use the buttons on the left to find out about our company, its products and services, its clients and our collective achievements.

You can also click on the link buttons in text at the bottom of each page or click on the button/bars within the text below to obtain specific information.

We are proud to hold ISO 9001/2000 accreditation. Click on the logo opposite to view our ISO9001/2000 certification details as issued by Bureau Veritas Quality International.

Fascinating? Just what you needed to know? Thought not.

Think what the reader needs to know. Then write what the reader needs to know.

Pestoff.co.nz — Let’s hope this inspires them to upgrade their web site. Don’t let’s be too scornful, either: any of us could fall into the same trap.

How alarming! My blogging rate has slowed down from lively to sluggish. This must change.

Sure, I had excuses. In the last couple of weeks I’ve launched a book which involved a certain amount of effort and publicity (Scarlet Heels: 26 Stories About Sex) and I’ve rehearsed and performed in a dance show (Crows Feet: How to be a Domestic Goddess).

But everyone has excuses when their work slacks off. I’m wondering how to ensure this deadly silence doesn’t happen again — unless on purpose, as when we’re on holiday.

My only strategy is to have a stash of draft blog posts, especially of tips. (In theory, we publish two tips per week.) This strategy fell to bits when we ran out of tips-jpegs. But that is just one more excuse. What right-minded writer has only one strategy to overcome writers blog block?

All I can say to myself and you is Sorry, sorry, sorry!

I enjoy blogging but if you break the habit, suddenly there goes one more week… one more week… one more week.

As my granddaughter observed about breathing, “Once you start, you have to keep going.” Quite right, Elsie.

I will pull up my socks. I will do better.

Image: Fabric cupcakes by Jennifer Holdaway. Compensation prize.
Elsie poem: You want to breathe

In Australia, “diploma” has a precise meaning, one that implies a pretty serious study programme. You wouldn’t embark on an Aussie diploma lightly.

It’s not like that all over the world, however. Internationally, a diploma can be anything from a post-graduate 2-year course of university study to a short, solid professional development qualification, like ours.

Oops, that’s another international terminology trap! “Professional development” in New Zealand applies to all professions, but in some countries is used mostly by the teaching profession.

Our Diploma in Web Content is an integrated bundle of 10 discrete short courses. You can complete the work and pass the tests (hopefully) in about 10 hours; you’re enrolled for 3 months so you can benefit fully.

We use the word “diploma” because:
~ there’s no international agreement on what a diploma should be
~ we need to differentiate between a 10-course diploma and a single 1-hour course.

Get it? Our Diploma is a short, focused, practical study programme that easily fits into the working life of busy professionals. You can do it, starting tomorrow and finishing within 3 months.

Nevertheless, terminology is a real problem, because in Australia the word “diploma” seems like a nonsense for a qualification that takes 3 months. Credibility suffers.

We’re thinking that for Aussie graduates we might provide an alternative version of our hard-copy Diploma, using words that make sense in their work environment. But what phrase should we use?

“Professional Development Diploma”?

We need your advice please!

Photo: (c) Tokyo Institute of Technology in spring.

Plain, yes. Boring, no. Barbarous, never.

2010 is a big George Orwell year: the 60th anniversary of his death occurred in January.

John Rossi summarises Orwell’s life work in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

George Orwell’s advice on writing style is recycled over and over again, year after year, all over the world… for a very good reason: it is timeless.

It’s hard to beat Orwell’s clear, simple, focused tips, expressed in a style both simple and civilised.

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech that you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word when a short word will do.
3. If it is possible to cut out a word, always cut it out.
4. Use the active rather than passive voice.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

Recently I attended a delightful wedding. It was perfect. Admittedly there were flaws, such as a cold and windy day, and the bride’s boat being stranded in Lyttelton Harbour. But the flaws just added to the perfection. (The clouds were aesthetically pleasing. Coastguard came to the rescue so the bride was only fashionably—not worryingly—late.)

The speeches were also perfect. Notes were abandoned and the father of the bride was sincere, funny and fluent. So were all the speakers (sincere etc., not abandoned). They kept to the time limit. And with one exception they told us what we wanted to hear: something personal, amusing, generous, good-hearted, inspiring—and totally relevant to the occasion and the audience.

One person, known and loved as eccentric if not perverse, broke the rules.

He gave a little sermon, not a wedding speech. He reviewed the movie Avatar and advised us all to go and see it. Then he asked us to stand up, hold hands, close our eyes and recite together, “Lord, we are all one.”

The sound of eyeballs rolling thundered around the hall as we obeyed. It was seriously weird, in the context of a wedding breakfast. Me, I was thinking, “He’s acting like a priest. But he’s not a priest or even religious, so who is this Lord we’re addressing? His meditation guru?”

Anyway, no big deal, and at least one of the 86 guests thought it was lovely.

As an analogy for tweeting, the wedding speech model works, don’t you think?

• Be sincere, funny and fluent
• Keep to the word limit.
• Write something personal, amusing, generous, good-hearted, inspiring—and totally relevant to the occasion and the audience.
• Don’t be a marketing priest.
• Break the rules sometimes and see what happens.

On Twitter, we’re still struggling to get the right balance between marketing, personal, responsive, useful and inspiring. It’s not easy.