Twelve Quick Principles of
Web Writing and Design
1. Put content on every page
2. Prioritize use of your screen real estate starting with the top and
left of the screen (but make density appropriate)
3. Use images strategically and rhetorically to suggest meaning and create
a visual hierarchy, not just to decoration
4. Coordinate images and text following principles of alignment and proximity
5. Scale, Crop and Optimize images for fast loading: just big enough,
just good enough
6. Divide the pages and write the links not just to break down your
topic, but to suggest an understanding of your topic and your site's purpose.
7. Avoid long pages that require scrolling more than two screen fulls,
and define/name pages as meaningful chunks. Design horizontally using
invisible layout tables.
8. Make text scannable with suggestive verbal and/or visual headings,
tags, thumbnails, icons, bullets, lists (visual hierarchy)
9. Place navigation in the first screenfull of the page, consistently
located on all pages, with the current page’s link included, visually
distinguished and unclickable.
10. Use short, meaningful, natural-language link anchors with significant
words at the beginning
11. Title your pages with words that will makes sense at a distance
12. Don’t pollute the infosphere: present original content in original
ways and credit outside sources.
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