All in 1 book: great examples & practical tips

books:

	• Letting Go of the Words: Writing Web Content that Works (Interactive Technologies) Janice (Ginny) Redish Morgan Kaufmann, 2007 - 384 pages average customer review:based on 48 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

highly recommended

All in 1 book: great examples & practical tips

If you want just one book for both pros and beginners, this is it. I've designed & delivered Web workshops, and this book hits all the topics. It's a perfect complement to make or deliver a course.

The layout is easy to scan and jump to your topic of interest. It is also consistent and builds upon its content such as the web page structure boxes to show where you are: Home, Pathway page, Info page, link, etc. The book is very visual with happy & angry faces pointing to good and bad example points. I read it in 2 evenings (4 hrs?).

For pros, the examples of "Legal info can be understandable, too" and "Using Illustrations Effectively" go beyond the normal good writing or writing for the web topics of other books. Ginny also challenges the Serif Font concept for print. She also challenges the Press Release for the web and how to integrate them or consider them as permanent deep info content, which needs to be built as a real web page, not a one time then forgotten note. The book also directly hits the topic of when to use web pages vs a PDF download "Breaking up large documents". Good stuff !

For beginners, the book moves step by step building the topics with very practical examples of web pages before and after. See the table of contents.

The ONE thing this book misses is job aids or templates, which people could use to put Ginny's points to practice on a daily basis. The book contains many bullet point check lists, but they are written as "Do this", not as an on-the-job check list. So, it's up to readers to pull out the points and start using them.

Some people may also say that the book needs a dedicated chapter on "Switching from print to web writing", which would contrast the differences. Ginny sprinkles this topic throughout the book.

for more information click here

Amazing book on its own even better with...

This is an excellent book on how to: structure a page, write content and generally make your site more professional.

Letting go of the words is a very practical, easy to read book. In our organization it is the foundation of the best practice guidelines for writing for the web.

Once you have read Ginny's book you will be eager to put her suggestions into practice. And, that's when the creative block sets in. You can easily fix the glaring errors on your own website and this is a great place to start. But to create truly remarkable content go and get yourself Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs (The New Rules of Social Media). This book will make you think about what you are writing or have written.

With 'Inbound Marketing' in hand your content style will change for the better and by applying Ginny's principles you will have an amazing site.

For me, much of this new style of electronic marketing has come together with the books I mentioned. But when you add another thought provoking book like Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery, not only will your presentations take a new twist, but when you extend the principles of imagery to your website, the images you select will truly enhance the written content.

At our next conference, our presenters will present using the Zen techniques and no longer be giving out handouts, instead content will be written as blogs on our website for all to share and easily access. These books nurture creative thinking and pragmatic solutions!

for more information click here

Letting Go of the Words ...Clear and concise

Clear, concise and very helpful tool in reorganizing the written word for visitors and search alike

MandyP

Letting Go of the Words (Writing Web Content that Works) has a very interesting and easy way of letting consumers know how to write content on the internet that won't bore their audience. Janice (Ginny) Redish does a great job explaining how to keep your audience interested by using terms the general public can relate to. Throughout the book, the author tries to relay the overall message that people don't want to read along the way! Instead, they skim until they find a topic that relates to what they are looking for and then scans that piece of information. This skim and scan method is explained in more detail within the book and is just one of the techniques she uses to explain her finding. With each method that she talks of, the messages are all the same. Trying to keep information short, cut down and as few words as possible is exactly what she is trying to convey. This 350 page book reveals Redish's recommendations that can be used to slice your content in half so your main message shines clear.
Chapters
1. Content! Content! Content!
2. People! People! People!
3. Starting Well: Home Pages
4. Getting There: Pathway Pages
5. Writing Information, Not Documents
6. Focusing on Your Essential Messages
7. Designing Your Web Pages for Easy Use
8. Tuning Up Your Sentences
9. Using Lists and Tables
10. Breaking Up You Text with Headings
11. Using Illustrations Effectively
12. Writing Meaningful Links
13. Getting From Draft to Final Web Pages
My overall thoughts of this book were that I believe the author did a fantastic job at getting to the underlying message that many web content writers miss out on. There are too many times you go to a web site and are bogged down with information but instead of reading it, you leave. I find myself in that exact situation constantly, even while in the process of reading this book it happened. People including myself, don't have time to sit at their computers and read through all that information just to find one simple question they were looking for. People want information that is fast and easy to find, and this book shows you how to do just that.

for more information click here

Impractical for Business Websites & Google

If you're concerned with Google ranking or copywriting, you will want to read my feedback on this book. Letting Go of the Words is a terrific book with respect to site structure and usability, but is extremely inadequate in regards to Search Engine Optimization and content that actually sells.

Dr. Redish's experience with web content is largely related to government agencies. In that respect, I couldn't ask for a better book on the basics of site structure and usability. The author presents a solid primer on helping your visitors find the information they seek as easily as possible.

The book, however, largely ignores issues that are important to business websites that wish to rank well on Google and other search engines. As an SEO guru, I was surprised that a book on writing web content completely ignores the fact that Google absolutely loves keyword-rich content. While some web purists believe in designing sites as though search engines never existed, it's impractical to cut short the very content that would ultimately deliver visitors to your site. Government sites will generally rank well by virtue of their number of (quality) inbound links. Business owners aren't looking to simply provide information, they're looking to get traffic and motivate visitors to perform an action (purchase, contact, subscribe). Some of her tips ("don't embed links" - chapter 12) are in opposition to what designers should do to encourage Google to "spider" relevant pages and categorize them better in its results.

If this book teaches you the architectural skills of constructing a physical store that's easy to get around, it does so without mentioning how to encourage walk-ins to buy your products, nor how to get them from the street into your business. Brilliant from a usability standpoint, but often contradictory to what can help sites generate search engine traffic and drive sales.

for more information click here

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

"Redish has done her homework and created a thorough overview of the issues in writing for the Web. Ironically, I must recommend that you read her every word so that you can find out why your customers won't read very many words on your website -- and what to do about it."

-- Jakob Nielsen, Principal, Nielsen Norman Group

"There are at least twelve billion web pages out there. Twelve billion voices talking, but saying mostly nothing. If just 1% of those pages followed Ginny's practical, clear advice, the world would be a better place. Fortunately, you can follow her advice for 100% of your own site's pages, so pick up a copy of Letting Go of the Words and start communicating effectively today."

--Lou Rosenfeld, co-author, Information Architecture for the World Wide Web

On the web, whether on the job or at home, we usually want to grab information and use it quickly. We go to the web to get answers to questions or to complete tasks - to gather information, reading only what we need. We are all too busy to read much on the web.

This book helps you write successfully for web users. It offers strategy, process, and tactics for creating or revising content for the web. It helps you plan, organize, write, design, and test web content that will make web users come back again and again to your site.

Learn how to create usable and useful content for the web from the master ? Ginny Redish. Ginny has taught and mentored hundreds of writers, information designers, and content owners in the principles and secrets of creating web information that is easy to scan, easy to read, and easy to use.

This practical, informative book will help anyone creating web content do it better.

Features
* Clearly-explained guidelines with full color illustrations and examples from actual web sites throughout the book.
* Written in easy-to-read style with many "befores" and "afters."
* Specific guidelines for web-based press releases, legal notices, and other documents.
* Tips on making web content accessible for people with special needs.

Janice (Ginny) Redish has been helping clients and colleagues communicate clearly for more than 20 years. For the past ten years, her focus has been helping people create usable and useful web sites. She is co-author of two classic books on usability: A Practical Guide to Usability Testing (with Joseph Dumas), and User and Task Analysis for Interface Design (with JoAnn Hackos), and is the recipient of many awards.

* Clearly-explained guidelines with full color illustrations and examples from actual
web sites throughout the book.

* Written in easy-to-read style with many "befores" and "afters."

* Specific guidelines for web-based press releases, legal notices, and other documents.

* Tips on making web content accessible for people with special needs.

for more information click here

hot