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.

Some things never change.

I’ve just found this cartoon, which is about a million years old. Well, to be more precise, it is pretty old. I used to show it in workshops for writers at least 15 years ago. Here’s how antique it is: I drew the original cartoon on a “transparency”.

What in the name of all things pointy is a “transparency”? you young things are wondering.

Well, my chickens, long ago in the olden days, the 459th caveman had not yet invented PowerPoint. So we trainers and teachers wrote and drew our words of wisdom on pieces of transparent plastic. We placed these pieces of plastic on a glass surface, plugged in a cord, turned on the electricity and behold, the words were displayed on a screen. Or a wall. Usually crooked. But sometimes legible.

Ah, those were the days. Not.

Way back then in the dark ages, Word had already invented Styles. And writers were consistently, perversely, ignorantly ignoring Styles. To be fair, nobody ever told them about Styles. Maybe nobody has told you. If not, let me do the honours.

Styles is not about tinkering with the appearance of every word, making it up as you go alone. Styles is about consistent formatting.

Styles enables you to tag any piece of text by its function, e.g.

• title
• chapter heading
• headline 1
• author
• quote
• page number
• table of contents
• address

If the text is correctly tagged, you can ensure that every chapter heading (to take one example) is formatted the same and therefore looks exactly the same.

Styles was like a primitive, prophetic glimpse of XHTML. It’s still hugely powerful, especially for long documents. Easy as pie for a writer to use. Saves days of work later on.

Of course most other word processors now have a Styles tool also: it’s not just MS Word.

Writer, please write. Let the designers design.

And save the sanity of several people in the production line (including yourself) by using Styles as you go.

If you didn’t know this before, you will thank me later.

Your web content (and everything else you write for business) is treated as data. Therefore:

• Write headlines and page titles that describe the document or give its key message.
• Write a summary of the document straight after the headline.
• In link-text, put key information about the page people will jump to (not “Click here”).

Virtually every time you write a business or professional document, it exists in electronic form. That electronic document is electronically labelled and stored in various electronic ways—not in a metal filing cabinet. And it will be treated as data, so that other people can find the document when they search.

The internet is hyperspace, with multiple dimensions, and that’s where your document lives.

• Entire web pages are lump of data that can be re-used in many places.
• Headlines and summaries are crucial bits of data that can appear in many places.
• Other data that’s obviously re-usable: contact details, share prices, corporate information, news items, photographs, slides, information… I could go on all day.

That data can be used and found in 1,000 places simultaneously (not just on the original piece of paper). For example, it could pop up in Google search results, on other web sites, in spreadsheets and PDFs, in Google Docs, online newspapers, on FaceBook and Twitter.

Writers, these fundamental facts about modern communication mean we need to write in a particular way. Picture your words in hyerspace—or at least in a different context: they should still make sense.

I’ve been doing a web content review “lite” for government web sites in New Zealand, on behalf of Plain English Power. This means taking one web site at a time, viewing some of their content, picking a few pages that look hard to read, and testing their readability.

I copy the main content or the first few paragraphs into a Word document, and use Word to find the Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease Score. Then I note any page with a score of 40 or under, one which fewer than 40% of adults can read with ease. Ideally, public government information should be at least 60 if not 70 on the Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease Score.

I’m busy, so I only spend about 10 minutes maximum on each site.

So far I’ve checked sites A-D on the NZ Government directory. I’ve listed 150 pages with low readability. On these pages, 40 is a high reading — plenty have score of 20 or lower! They are seriously bad, and there’s no shortage. The erring web sites are frankly appalling. It’s obvious no effort has been made to translate long strings of multisyllabic bureaucratic gobbledegook into plain language. The site owners don’t care about the public. They are not talking to the public. They are talking to themselves.

At the other extreme are government web sites with excellent content. The owners have worked seriously hard to make the web sites not only comprehensible to the public, but useful. I don’t look for bad content here. They deserve applause, and I’m not here to nit-pick, just to assess the problems of government content.

In the middle of the scale sit a lot of government web sites that are readable, but pointless. They have translated the necessary information into short sentences so we can understand it. But they haven’t made the information useful to you and me. It doesn’t help us perform a task or get access to a government service. It just gives us, in plain and boring language, the basic information required by law.

So, government web sites in New Zealand are just like that brat of a girl:

There was a little girl
and she had a little curl
right in the middle of her forehead.
And when she was good
she was very very good,
and when she was bad she was horrid.

I’m very concerned about the horrid government web sites. They aren’t tools or communication channels: they are rusty old filing cabinets caught with their drawers open. Their content is a disgrace.

New Zealand Government Directory

Do you use a WYSIWYG for writing web content? That’s short for What You See Is What You Get.

You’ll be tempted to use those magic buttons that change the appearance of your text. Text decoration buttons make the text on your web page bigger, smaller, in a different colour, font or size.

Examples of WYSIWYG text-decoration buttons:
 


These buttons are a bad way to decorate the words you’re writing. Why? Because if you change the appearance of text on a whim, the page will start to look messy. Even worse, it will look different from other pages on the web site.

The web site should have a recognisable look and feel. For instance, all level 1 headlines will be a particular colour and size.

Just making text bold does not turn it into a headline. Instead, write text in the proper field for headlines. Then it will look like a headline and act like a headline.

Page design is the job of designers. If you’re writing text for a web site, keep things very simple.

P.S. Vote in our poll: what new online courses do you want? Free course to one entrant.

Communication superpowers. That’s what you need these days.

Whatever your day job, if you’re any kind of knowledge worker, communication skills are essential. Without good writing skills you may not even get the job you want, let alone be promoted. We know that, and yet, strangely, you may never have had five minutes’ training in basic plain language or business writing.

Chances are you’ve got a university degree or an equivalent qualification. You’re top of your game, be it accountant, lawyer, manager, ICT professional, scientist, teacher, company director, designer or business person. The quality of your writing has never been a problem up until now (as far as you know).

OK, fair enough. But now you’re aware that some of the things you write are appearing on web sites or the company intranet. You want them to be found by search engines. You want people to notice them and even read them, darn it! And it’s just not as easy as it was before.

Suddenly, ordinary communication skills are not enough. To be found, noticed and read, you need the Contented communication superpowers.

But how? You don’t have time to spend a whole day at a professional development course! However, you can manage 10 hours over the next three months, no problem.

Buy the CONTENTED Diploma in Web Content — you need it now.

The CONTENTED courses are brilliant, like you, so you’ll get along just fine. As another bonus, this may well qualify as part of the annual training quota which you require to maintain your professional status. Check it out.

Miraz Jordan’s Blog, Knowit.co.nz

The Contented email newsletter included three special offers today. In brief…

Thank you, thank you, thank you to all our fantastic customers. You understand the value of great web content, and you chose our courses above all other options. After your first purchase, 38% came back to buy more courses. Typically, you enrol two or three staff, discover how great the courses are, then enrol another 20, 50 or 100.

Frankly, a heck of a lot of hard work lies behind the online courses you love so much. If our customers were ho-hum or grumpy, we might have given up months ago.

1. 5% discount for next group purchase if you are on our clients page or have purchased from us before. This applies when you purchase for a group of 5 or more.
But hurry! This special offer expires on 24 December 2009.

2. Half-price Diploma in Web Content if you did our first generation courses (in HTML).
Be quick! This offer is valid until 28 February 2010.

3. 10% discount for a successful referral.
Tell others about CONTENTED courses! For each successful referral, we’ll give you 10% off your next single licence Diploma purchase.

But wait, there’s more! Two more free gifts:

• Use our writing tips on your intranet free — just drag and drop.
• Follow us on Twitter for unexpected gifts. Our first Twitter exclusive gave five lucky people a free Diploma!
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In all business writing, including web content, use the same word for the same thing. Be consistent. It’s not boring, it’s clear.

This is the opposite of the advice we received in school, when we were learning “creative writing”. We were told that it’s boring to repeat the same word. Be creative! said our teacher. Find a synonym! Use the thesaurus!

But business English is not supposed to be creative! It’s supposed to be clear.

Are you providing a workshop, a seminar, a tutorial, a class or a course? Decide, and then use the same word.

Here’s an example of what happens if you break this rule. In the following sentences, people may assume that two different events are being discussed:

A workshop on basic HTML will be held at Reddnose High School on 7 July. If you want to attend the beginners’ seminar, contact secretary@rhs.edu.tk.

But which word will you choose? In order of preference:

1. the word in the company style guide
2. the word you’ve always used in the past
3. the word that seems best after a little bit of research.

Strange, isn’t it, that so many companies and government organisations will cheerfully spend hundreds of thousands of dollars every year on a content management system for their web sites and intranets…

• when the content is shocking awful and likely to stay that way
• and when their staff honestly don’t know how to improve the content
• and when the cost of training their writers would be mere pocket money
• and when they’ve already got a training budget that would easily cover the cost.

What are they thinking? That the elves will come in the night and rewrite their content?

Listen carefully: it’s not going to happen.

Four reasons why staff content writers need to be trained:
1. All content is either an asset or a liability.
2. Correct editing at least doubles a web site’s usability.
3. Well written content strongly influences search results.
4. Plain language dramatically saves money and time.

OK, I’ll make it easy for you with an ad.

Five reasons why you should choose the CONTENTED Diploma in Web Content:
1. It’s quick (10 hours) and convenient (online).
2. It’s instantly useful, with clear rules for content editing.
3. It’s up-to-date, with practical real-world examples.
4. It’s brilliant, beautiful and fun.
5. It’s absurdly cheap: only NZ$300 inc. GST per person, with major discounts for groups.

Grab the chance to start fixing your content now, with a training system that will work. Your web content and intranet content will not fix itself.

And sorry, darlings, there are no elves. Or if they do exist, they’re far too busy making shoes to fix your web content.
http://contented.com/courses.php

Far too much policy is dumped straight on the web.

• Policy is often legitimately complex.
• Policy is always hard to write and usually hard to read.
• People need instructions or procedures more often than policy.

Consultation policy documents need to be on the web, and government policy needs to be on the web. But once the policy of a non-government organisation or business is finalised, it’s usually only consulted by staff. That policy belongs out of public view—maybe on the intranet.

If you are trying to untangle policy for publication as useful information on the web, here are some tips.

1. Don’t start with the policy. Don’t cut and paste. Don’t rehash policy for the web. Instead, ask what your target audience really wants and needs. Is it a long-winded explanation of your policy? If not, start planning a new page from scratch.

2. Start with the people. Let people self-select into an appropriate category. Then they need to read only the information that applies to them. Use yes-no questions, for example: Are you under 18?

3. Focus on the task. Don’t try to combine instructions and procedures with the reasons behind them. Most readers just want to know what they have to do in order to achieve their goal.

4. If you must publish your organisation’s policy (perhaps for legal reasons), consider providing the original, authoritative document policy without editing. Maybe even (gulp! shock! horror!) as a PDF.