Writing for the web

Preparing content for the web is much more than just copying text from your favorite word processor and pasting it into the framework of a web page. In order to ensure the greatest accessibility and widespread availability of web content, it is important to consider that there is more to the web page than the "words and pictures" that end up in the person's browser.

Web pages are built with HTML, a structural language that is used to denote the different structural parts of the document. HTML employs an extensive series of opening and closing "tags" to mark parts of the document as, for example, headings (<h></h>), lists (<li></li>), quotations (<q></q>), paragraphs (<p></p>), and abbreviations and acronyms (<abbr></abbr> or <acronym></acronym>). These tags don't appear in the final view of the web page, but are used by the various web software applications to interpret the intended format of the text for output to the end user.

To help clarify the term "semantic" further, consider that some HTML tags (such as the <b> and <i> tags, for bold and italic formatting) are not considered semantic elements but are presentational elements, i.e. while they do alter the visual presentation of the text, they don't define the actual structure of the text.

Building web pages using semantically structured HTML and then changing the way that the HTML looks with Cascading Style Sheets results in a web page that is both aesthetically pleasing to people viewing the web page in a browser and is logically structured. Pages built this way are not only accessible to the largest possible audience, but are also well set for future revision of both style and content, and can be easily adapted to accommodate emerging technology and advancing web development standards.

Document length

When determining the length of a web page, savvy web developers will keep in mind that market-research testing has revealed over and over again that web users tend to scan text rather than read it fully, and that users are generally not inclined to scroll vertically (and even fewer will scroll horizontally) to see what else lies on a web page. This inclination is mediated by factors such as the age of the end user and the kind of information the user is seeking. Determining page length is, at best, a subjective decision, because of several other factors as well, including screen size, screen resolution, and user font size choices, etc.

Document authors and page developers should, however, keep in mind some basic principles while determining the amount of content that will end up on each web page. When authoring a document on a computer, content creators create one file, which may consist of many "pages." When moving this content to web-based delivery, they must remember that one file cannot necessarily be considered one "web page."

When authoring your documents, identify appropriate "breaks" where the user can "go to" the next page. As a general rule of thumb, anything beyond 400-500 words should probably be spread over at least two web pages, but again, this break must be both appropriate and logical. Use headings, sub headings, and paragraphs as logical "break points".

Finally, when content spans numerous web pages, ensure that appropriate internal navigation exists so that end users can proceed through the document as easily and quickly as possible. Because of deep linking, a user may not start on the document's "first page," but on any of its pages, so each page of a document should contain enough information and navigational elements to orient the user.

More Resources

Usability guru Jakob Nielsen has an extensive collection of online articles on this topic, and they are all excellent resources: http://www.useit.com/papers/webwriting/

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Stanford Online Accessibility Program