{"id":236,"date":"2009-10-01T22:00:46","date_gmt":"2009-10-01T09:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thunderguy.com\/semicolon\/?p=236"},"modified":"2009-12-08T16:10:31","modified_gmt":"2009-12-08T03:10:31","slug":"letting-go-of-the-words-ginny-redish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/semicolon\/2009\/10\/01\/letting-go-of-the-words-ginny-redish\/","title":{"rendered":"Letting Go of the Words &#8212; Ginny Redish"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0123694868?ie=UTF8&#038;tag=thunderguycom-20&#038;linkCode=as2&#038;camp=1789&#038;creative=390957&#038;creativeASIN=0123694868\" title=\"Buy Letting Go of the Words at amazon.com\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.thunderguy.com\/semicolon\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/letting-go-of-the-words.jpg\" alt=\"Letting Go of the Words\" width=\"132\" height=\"160\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-232\" \/><\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=thunderguycom-20&#038;l=as2&#038;o=1&#038;a=0123694868\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" style=\"border:none !important; margin:0px !important;\" \/>&#8220;Writing web content that works&#8221; is the subtitle of this book, and it delivers a thorough treatment of the topic. I don&#8217;t think it contains any radical new ideas, but it is a nicely organised compilation of what some people call &#8220;best practices&#8221; about writing and layout for the web.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, you can&#8217;t possibly summarise an entire book with a list of bullet points, but here are the ideas in the book that struck me as being especially useful.<!--more--><\/p>\n<ul style=\"clear:left\">\n<li>Write information, not documents.<\/li>\n<li>Don&#8217;t make people think. (Thanks, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0321344758?ie=UTF8&#038;tag=thunderguycom-20&#038;linkCode=as2&#038;camp=1789&#038;creative=390957&#038;creativeASIN=0321344758\">Steve Krug<\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=thunderguycom-20&#038;l=as2&#038;o=1&#038;a=0321344758\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" style=\"border:none !important; margin:0px !important;\" \/>.)<\/li>\n<li>Remember that some people will print out pages.<\/li>\n<li>Cut! Cut! Cut! And cut again! It&#8217;s been said for a long time by many writers that people don&#8217;t read on the web. The less you write, the more likely you&#8217;ll be read.<\/li>\n<li>Keep active space in your content. Active space is white space that separates content, as opposed to the passive space in page margins and so on.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.thunderguy.com\/semicolon\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/badly-drawn-man.png\" alt=\"Badly drawn man\" title=\"Badly drawn man\" width=\"141\" height=\"142\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-237\" align=\"right\" \/>I have only one quibble with this book. There are a lot of little talking head cartoons, meant to represent web users saying things like, &#8220;How do I check my order on your site?&#8221; To me, these are so badly drawn that they are intensely annoying: the brunette woman&#8217;s lips make her look as if she has a moustache; the man with the cap looks like a bearded woman; the bald man looks like a bald woman with a moustache.<\/p>\n<p>But enough nitpicking. There&#8217;s a heap of useful information in this book. Definitely worth keeping and referring to again and again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Writing web content that works&#8221; is the subtitle of this book, and it delivers a thorough treatment of the topic. I don&#8217;t think it contains any radical new ideas, but it is a nicely organised compilation of what some people call &#8220;best practices&#8221; about writing and layout for the web. Of course, you can&#8217;t possibly [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[30,84,18],"class_list":["post-236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-usability","tag-books","tag-usability","tag-web-development"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/semicolon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/semicolon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/semicolon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/semicolon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/semicolon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/semicolon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":297,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/semicolon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236\/revisions\/297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/semicolon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/semicolon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/semicolon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}