Great for info sites, less useful for marketing content

books:


	• Letting Go of the Words: Writing Web Content that Works (Interactive Technologies) (Interactive Technologies) ... Janice (Ginny) Redish Morgan Kaufmann, 2007 - 384 pages average customer review:based on 20 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

the best book on writing for the web

i've read several books and countless articles on how to write well for the web. Ginny Redish nails it perfectly. This is hands-down the best book on writing for the web out there. The book is beautifully laid-out, with easy to grasp, common sense advice - all backed up by solid research data and straightforward examples.

If you're a fan of usability, good user-centered design, and easy-to-read helpful books, and you'd like to improve your site's performance with better writing, definitely get this book. I'm already reworking the content on my sites with many of Ginny's suggestions, and I have no doubt my readers will be happy.

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A book that will raise the quality of Web sites

Ginny Redish's book, Letting Go of the Words, is a book long overdue. Until now, I've never found a book on writing content for the Web that had anything of substance to say. What ever they said, we already knew intuitively.

This is not the case with Redish's book. The book is filled from cover to cover with very important ideas and messages for writers. Moreover, the ideas are presented very effectively. In each chapter, Redish presents principles dealing with the topic at hand. She then discusses each principle and deomonstrates the use of each with excellent examples -- both the results when the principle is used and when it is violated. In this format it also makes for a very handy reference document.

After I read the book, I bought two more copies to circulate amongst our Web development team. It is a must read for our writers/editors, but all members of the team, I believe, will stand to benefit from it.

This book is sure to become a classic in its field. As a result, it will, I believe, have a major effect of raising the quality of Web sites everywhere.

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Great for info sites, less useful for marketing content

Everyone who writes web content will benefit from reading this book with its clear guidelines and extensive examples. The book is well organized and its format makes it easy to find specific ideas.

However, this book will be most useful for writers working on information sites. The book presents only limited discussion and examples for e-commerce sites and does not address important issues for those sites, such as guiding customers to a sale or writing for search engine optimization.

An excellent resource for all online communication

My company is a consultancy that creates interactive learning programs for large corporations. I am especially interested in blending the best practices of instructional design/performance support, technical communication, and web site design. For the latter, this book is an indispensible resource!

I shared the book with our Content Director, who, at first, was too busy to really pay any attention to it. Once he cracked the cover, he immediately wrote me back and raved! The book compiles so many of the basic concepts that he and I desire our entire writing team to incorporate into their projects.

We purchased multiple copies and assigned one chapter to each of our team to present to the team as a whole. These weekly presentations have been refresher for some, but new material for others, and now we are finally all level-set on basic writing/presentation concepts for online delivery. Hooray!

Only negative feedback I can give is that I did hear a bit of grumbling that the author broke her own rules in a couple places - using a few headings that were too long, for example, when there is a chapter specifically on writing good headings. I should probably have docked the rating a bit for that stuff, but overall we got so much good from this little book that I feel I must give it full praise!

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The best I've read

Ginny is a well known and respected veteran in the Society for Technical Communicators. I have seen her work for years. But this is the best - for her and for the subject. Note that she carefully avoids getting into technology and how to make it happen; she stays with content and presentation - and does oh so well at that. She covers so many principles that I've been teaching within my company, but does it so much better, has wonderful contrasting examples. She supplements them with comic style images that make the point very nicely.

This is about writing for online reading, which is pretty much what really happens in any corporation, even though they read "documents" online.

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reviews: 1, 2, page 3, 4

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