Increasingly, people rely on the web for many things: paying bills, doing research, product support, and the list goes on. Letting Go of the Words: Writing Web Content that Works by Janice (Ginny) Redish explores how to write for this relatively new medium.
As writers, we often assume that users will read every word that we write. Nope. They scan. We assume that people will arrive at a website page using the very careful navigation we've set up. Not so--maybe they found the page using a search engine. Speaking as a user, my frustration with some websites has lead me to give up on them.
This book has 13 chapters and is full of real-life examples of what actual websites have done. Writing for the web requires you to understand what your goals are and who your audience is. What I found most useful about the book was the way Redish demonstrated what was good and not so good using short call-outs. Overall, I felt like there was lots of great information, even for experienced writers, but there were times I felt like she was repeating herself, especially with the end of chapter summaries. This book is a worthwhile resource for anyone looking to improve website content.
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