Writing for web pages
A web page is not like paper
People don't read web pages in the way that they read paper documents, and so we must write differently for this medium.
Here are a few main points to bear in mind:
- Keep your paragraphs and sentences short: you don't know how much the person can see on their screen, and you don't know how long the line of text is for them.
- Keep the important information towards the top of the page: otherwise people are likely to miss it if they have to scroll
- Don't put too much information on a single page
- Use different levels of headings carefully to break up the information on the page
- Use bulleted lists rather than dense paragraphs of text.
Writing style
Think about your intended audience, and adopt an appropriate tone for them. Be consistent in your style (e.g. language, tone of voice, terminology), throughout a set of related pages.
Layout
Although most people will read your page using a graphical browser such as Internet Explorer or Mozilla, some people will use a text browser or even a speech browser. It is important that you don't use devices which convey something about the structure of the information to control the appearance of the information.This means:
- use 'heading tags' only for text which really is a heading (not just to make it bolder, or a bit bigger)
- only use tables for genuinely tabular data (not just to put paragraphs into columns)
Accessibility
The Content Management System has been constructed in such as way as to help maximise the accessibility of University web pages. For example, the layout of the page is controlled by style sheets, as are the fonts and colours which are used. There are still some aspects web accessibility, however, which are under the control of individual departmental web editors.
The following points will help you to maintain a high degree of accessibility:
- Use tables on your pages only for the display of tabular data, not simply to provide a multi-column layout for text
- Make sure that you provide meaningful alternative text for any non-decorative images which you use.
- Do not add font tags via the embedded editor to control aspects such as font face, size or colour. Use the HTML heading styles provided. If you do have a requirement for altering the appearance of the text, please contact the web team, as there may be styles available suitable for your purpose.