11 tips for good content
- Choose good page titles and sub-headings.
A听good title makes people want to read the first sentence of your content. If it doesn鈥檛 do that, your content may be scintillating, but no one may ever know.
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- Avoid jargon.
If people can't understand what you're saying, there's not much point in saying it.
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- Omit unnecessary words.
If you can use 50 words to say what you鈥檙e saying right now in 200, your readers will thank you. Even better, they鈥檒l read your website.
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- Reading 鈮� Understanding.
Even if people do wade through a long-winded, jargon-filled message, they still may not understand it.
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- Don鈥檛 duplicate content.
Be sure to link to other sites' content rather than copying it. If (very brief) content does need to appear on several pages, use听blocks.
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- Bullets are your friend.
When you need to list items, tasks, courses, or nearly anything else, bullets are the way to go. 听They draw the eye, are easily skimmed, and create breathing room around your content.
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- Number things!
Numbered lists -- like this one -- help us situate text. 听They can convey relative importance, rank, or the order in which tasks can be done. And like regular bullets, they're more skimmable than hunks of text.
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- Put the important stuff up front.
Let's say your unit revamps its procurement protocols. The first thing your audience wants to know is that payments will now take half as long to process. 听If you open with an ode to well-designed invoices, your readers may move on before they get to the good stuff.
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- Use bold,听italics听sparingly (and ALLCAPS not at all)
Occasionally it makes sense to emphasize听a few听words on the page. But if you emphasize almost everything, you haven't really emphasized anything. As well, in Internet-speak, block caps = yelling. 听SO PLEASE DON'T SHOUT!
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- Write once, edit twice!
It may seem like extra work, but you'll be amazed at how many redundancies, typos and unnecessary words become obvious after a second run-through. Take the time -- your users will thank you!
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- Make your links clear and succinct
Links should describe what they鈥檙e pointing to (like 鈥淚nformation for applicants鈥� or 鈥淎pplication form [PDF]鈥�), or else work as a concrete call-to-action (like "Learn more" or "Register now"). Avoid linking ambiguous, non-descriptive text like "click here", and never spell out entire URLs.
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