Heading
1, Title Case, Times
New Roman Size 5 in Teal
No, you didn't
catch this page while it was still in production. That weird-looking headline
is to illustrate the point of this page.
Type
face (Times, Helvetica, Verdana), type style (bold, italic)
and size (1-7 on the Web, rather than 10 point and such in your
wordprocessing program) are only part of what goes into a style
guide and only part of the formatting guidelines.
Style guides
don't include the tips on writing for the Web that you'll find
here, of course. We're including a few here just to show you how to apply
style guidelines — and because we're nice, helpful people.
The body
text here is in Verdana size 2 type. Be sure to highlight
key words or phrases in bold. The result should make sense and cover
your most important points when a reader scans the page, reading only
what's in bold. Links are easier to read in bold, too, depending
on the color you've chosen for them (blue, usually the default color,
shows up find without being in bold). For example:
You can
find Judith's bio in the
Who We Are section.
Whether all
links should be in standard blue, as some people advise, is for you, your
designer and usability experts to haggle over.
Heading
2, Verdana size 2, teal
Try to keep
paragraphs to no more than four to seven lines, because longer, denser
copy is hard on the eyes onscreen, thus difficult to read. Vary
the cadence or rhythm of your writing by varying the lengths of the
sentences. Keep them short and clear.
Avoid starting
a bulleted list after a subhead. Use introductory or explanatory copy
first.
Heading
2, sentence rather than title case
When you
link to other pages, either within your site or to other sites, create
the links so that another window opens without taking readers away
from the page they're reading (in Dreamweaver, choose Blank in the Target
window). Then people can choose to close that window or go to the other
page immediately or later, and you've helped them avoid getting lost or
having to hit the Back button.
By creating
links that way, you'll probably keep people from leaving your site in
frustration, too. That's because causing readers to click on Back is
usually the equivalent of asking them to choose Exit — it wastes
time and irritates them, so they leave the site.
Heading
1 Style
If this page
had another main section, as some on this site do, this is how it would
look. Purists (which most editors are, even I admit) would argue, saying
only the headline should be in this style, and there should be three different
levels of headings here. That works better on paper than onscreen.
Always suggest
where it would be useful for the reader to go from this page —
the call to action, in marketing lingo. You can also wind up by telling
them precisey what you'd like them to do, such as "contact us now"
(with an e-mail link that will launch a window to write to you, such as:
just send us e-mail).
You might
also want to write the e-mail address for people using text-only readers,
e.g., info@polishedprose.com, but that depends on your audience.
Here's an example adapted from the main page of the Who
We Are section on this site:
Please be
sure to check these pages, too:
You can find
samples of her writing and editing in the Portfolio,
Recent Articles and
Newsletter Archive
sections. Or just call 831.336.4232 to get acquainted and discuss
a possible project.
That's it
for now, but watch for more about developing style guides later.
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