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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