Chapter 1 Continued - Presenting Text on the Web

Opening Remarks

Do you remember the days of writing all day and night to earn an "A" on your high school or university research paper? Before turning in the paper for grading, did the teacher remind you to make it neat because she had 30 other papers to read and was going to lower your grade if she had to work too hard to read yours? When you write for the web, think of your pages as a research paper that will be graded by such a teacher. The web viewing public will reward your effort by actually reading your work.

Presentation Tips

Many webmasters "throw" an essay on a page without thinking about the format of the text. Often, they add a few graphics to try to make the page more lively, but they neglect to give viewers a pleasant reading experience. You need to think about formatting and organizing your text on every page to keep fickle viewers from clicking to another site too quickly. Here are some tips that will help.

1) Non-Graphic Fonts: Always type the main body of your text with a font that most people have loaded on their computers, such as Arial, Helvetica, or Verdana. If you use a special font that a viewer does not have, that person's browser will convert your special font to the computer's default font, which might look strange. Also, use a size 2 or 3 font (depending on the font used). Many webmasters write documents in size 1 because they think size 1 is artistic. Size 1 might be attractive to some people, but many people cannot read such fine print on a monitor. Size 1 works for captions and small descriptions, but never for long statements and essays.

You can use fonts larger than size 3 for headers and special effects, but generally not for the main body of your text. Also, remember to contrast your text against the background color of your page. Black text on a white background is the easiest to read.

2) Headers, Paragraphs, and Skimming Aids: Regardless of the quality of your writing, most people will not want to read every word on your page. They want to get to the "meat" of your writing quickly, see certain topics, and avoid other topics. To help people find topics on your page, add skimming aids. Headers are the most obvious skimming aids. Keep them short and to the point, and make them slightly larger than the body of the text that follows. For emphasis, make headers bold or a different color, or place graphics near them. You should only underline headers or other text if you link the underlined words to other pages or sites. (The underline is the default method for showing text links. If you underline text without adding links, your site might become inconsistent and some people might be confused.)

Paragraphs help speed up the reading process and are also good skimming aids. Many webmasters add thousands of words to a page without a single break. We rarely get past a quarter screen of that nonsense. The white space between each paragraph pleases the eye, and gives the viewer a chance to rest and return to a point on your page easily. Other effective skimming aids include text and graphical insets. Some people insist that you need graphics mixed throughout all of your written documents for an effective presentation. However, if your topic is interesting and your writing is good, you do not need to worry about extra pictures. People will read your message.

3) White space and other spacing issues: Design your pages with plenty of white space. Too much text and too many graphics on a page distracts the viewer. Many webmasters show text across the entire width of a browser window, and force viewers to scroll horizontally to see hidden text. Shame on them! Always keep text well within the width of a single screen, and leave plenty of margin space in the text cell. Similarly, you should not force viewers to scroll vertically too many times.

Go to Chapter 2 - Spelling --- Go Back to the Introduction
Go to the Table of Contents