Confessions of a web editor

There’s always a degree of trepidation as you send the email round seeking feedback on a new site you have created.

You’ve given this site a load of head-space, time and effort and are pretty confident that you’ve covered all the angles. So you send the email, copying in all the interested parties… and wait…

There appear to be four types of response;

• The immediate email which says I haven’t looked at it but gives a nod of approval (although be warned these are often frustratingly followed up by a further email after they have actually looked at it!)
• A measured email which lists a million minor text changes
• A visit in person… rare, but generally never a good thing!
• A yawning silence (which is when you remember that you should have put a launch date in your email)

The latter is generally most common and to make myself feel better I have decided to take silence as a good thing – they’ve found what they wanted quickly and easily, and it says what they want. Job done! Although it would be nice if sometimes people actually said this!

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The University style is to use sentence-case for titles and headings. This works for me as it is so much easier on the eye than the ups and downs you get with title-case.

Compare;

• Confessions of a Web Editor – Reading, Writing and Ruthless Editing
• Confessions of a web editor – Reading, writing and ruthless editing

Okay… even I have to confess that viewed like this there isn’t a huge difference… However whilst it might not be immediately obvious, sentence-case is definitely better for scanning which is the best argument I can think of for using it online.

The most common areas where it comes into play are;

• headings
• menu’s
• buttons
• news and events headlines

In some cases you can see the indecision…. title-case? Sentence-case?? Sod it, I’ll cover all the bases and do both – one for the menu and another for the page heading. And despite previously admitting that there isn’t a huge difference you’ll be surprised how easily you spot it when you start looking (and how militant you become in its application!).

As with most elements of the style guide we are striving for consistency across the central University site and departments, so spread the word – sentence-case all the way.

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Well-placed relevant images work wonders online and are particularly useful for breaking up text heavy pages.

The university template doesn’t allow for full width images (except in the banner), and the best way to use photos within a content page is to;

• make sure it is relevant to the content
• limit the width to 200 pixels
• put them in a callout box and float it to the right.

As for subject matter, due to the size of images we can use it’s best to keep them simple and striking. Users respond best to faces looking out, which works well on index and content pages, but if linking to another website we often use a crop of the banner image.

In addition to the subjective stuff, the fundamentals are;

• All images should be gif or jpeg
• Resize images to appropriate proportions before you publish them
• Avoid animated gifs, WordArt or ClipArt
• Make sure you have permission to use the images you are publishing
• Give your image a relevant name when you save it
• Write a short description in the ‘Alt’ field

Rumour has it that there is a gallery snippet in development, which we are eagerly awaiting as it will be fantastic for displaying photo galleries from events.

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Bulleted lists are a really useful way to break up the text on a page as they slow down the scanning eye.

Lists are great for drawing attention to important points and we use them extensively on programme landing pages (See the postgraduate site) as they are an effective way of getting across lots of stuff in a small space.

When creating bulleted lists;

• remember to keep them short, descriptive and easy to read
• front-load your bullet point with the key message
• limit them to no more than nine items
• don’t go further than secondary level bullets
• only use numbered lists when the order is really important.

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Web projects that involve starting with a clean slate are few and far between and an opportunity to be relished. In this instance the site is one that has got so out of control (see ‘could you just…‘), that starting from scratch is definitely the best way forward.

A lot of the frustrations of website development come through design by committee. There are always loads of people with a vested interest in a site, and in an ideal world you should aim to get a consensus of opinion on the key priorities and messages, what is the purpose of the site and who is the target audience?

In this instance everyone’s concerns are – put simply, improving access to their own content. So I worked on;

• identifying the key messages and target audiences
• an information architecture that retains similar, if not better user journeys
• enhanced sign-posting for the target content
• improved links within content pages to other relevant areas of the site

Watch this space to see whether it has achieved the desired results.

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One of the main principles of web usability is to design for most common user, and for the University this is the undergraduate market. However we have to accommodate others, and for us this includes (in no particular order);

• Prospective postgraduate and part-time students,
• Academics and researchers,
• International audience,
• Business,
• Staff,
• Current students,
• Alumni.

How to cater for everyone’s needs is a constant juggling of priorities not just for the central site, but also (and probably more so) for departments. One colleagues top priority may not be what your core user groups are interested in, however the business of the university or your department may depend on prominent links to this information.

This is where you go from web author to negotiator, offsetting your information architecture and web content policies against an easy life.

Before holding your hands up in defeat, have a look at some common solutions;

• Research shows users look in a F pattern which means a link in the menu will work fine,
• If it only needs to go up for a week lets submit it as a news item,
• Would a friendly url be useful to use in advertising, rather than ‘follow the link from the home page’?
• Users don’t generally read that much text, but we could link to a pdf for further information.

However when it comes down to it, the integrity of your carefully planned undergraduate user experience strategy is often worth compromising for the sake of office harmony!

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A lot of web work is generated from ‘could you just; change this, tweak that, remove that link, add a new page here and a new button there…’ and this is where I have to confess that the line of least resistance is definitely easiest. Changes get made and you gain a reputation for acting efficiently.

But where does this leave the user? More than likely the person that requested the change has only one concern – to promote their own cause. Its a web authors job to look at the bigger picture and work out how the change fits in in the grand scheme of the site, although how many times have I said, ‘I’ll get this done and come back to it all when I have a spare minute’…’

Good practice dictates you should check your user journey/experience every time, but being a realist this just isn’t feasible. Having said that after years of these changes the amalgamation of such requests can make for a bulky and unweildy section of the site which was pretty much unuseable… and yes, I’m writing this because I have found one such site…

You’ll have to wait for our next blog ‘a clean slate‘ for further advice if you’re in similar circumstances!

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A few pointers on naming your web files and folders…

• Keep file names short but descriptive of the page content. For example, when naming a page about winter coats, the Ronseal-like ‘winter-coats.html’ works better than the more obscure ‘winter-warmers.html’…
• …The same goes for naming image files and pdfs. Will you really remember what ‘pic15.jpg’ looks like in six month’s time?
• Think about the final URL of the page when naming files and folders. Logical, simple, easy-to-spell and easy-to-type URLs work best.
• Don’t use whacky characters, spaces or underscores in file names as they can play havoc with search engine optimisation. Stick to letters and digits, using hyphens if you need to separate words.
• If you are filing pages by date, format the date in reverse order, eg. ‘100107newsletter.html’ for a newsletter published 7 January 2010. This will help keep your files in chronological order.
• It’s good practice to avoid using capitals when naming files. This is particularly important for University of Kent web editors because our web analytics application, Sitestat, is sensitive to case, eg. www.kent.ac.uk/DICE/ will not always be treated the same as www.Kent.ac.uk/dice/
• Be consistent. Whatever file-naming system you employ, consistency is the key. It will save you more traumas than we care to list…

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Firstly, a confession:  I’m a hypocrite. Ask me what I think of exclamation marks (although sadly no one ever does) and I’ll tell you that they are the scourge of the publishing world. At best, exclamation marks in editorial copy make me cringe. At worst, they make my blood boil.  Particularly when used to excess. But that doesn’t stop me writing emails to friends that go something like:

“Hey! How are you? I can’t believe what happened last night!! Did you manage to sort it all out in the end?! Well, better go!

My point here is not to divulge the riveting emails I send, but to note that when it comes to using exclamation marks – there’s a time and a place. Littering informal correspondence with exclamation marks is a personal choice. In fact, in this context exclamation marks arguably add tone and personality.  They liven up the text and make you sound cheery, upbeat, human. The same email without any exclamation marks may seem deadpan and Eeyorish.

But the rule is: when writing professional copy, use exclamation marks sparingly.  Why? Well for starters, using too many can make you sound a bit giddy.  Perhaps not the professional image you were hoping for. What’s more, writers mistakenly use them when trying to muster up buzz and excitement – the literary equivalent of party poppers and silly hats.

Come to the University of Kent! There’s so much to see and do in our leafy green campus! You’ll be spoilt for choice!

Let the reader be the judge of how exciting your proposition is – without trying to persuade them with punctuation.  If it’s interesting, it will still be interesting sans exclamation mark.  A quick Google search on the topic throws up this quote by the essayist Lewis Thomas which frankly says it all:

The problem is that once you allow one or two in, they tend to multiply, scattering themselves everywhere, expostulating, sounding off, making believe that phrases have a significance beyond what the words themselves are struggling to say. They irritate the eyes. They are, as well, pretentious, self-indulgent and in the end almost always pointless. If a string of words is designed to be an astonishment, a veritable terror of a string, the words should be crafted to stand on their own, not forced to jump up and down by an exclamation point at the end like a Toyota salesman on TV.
(Et Cetera, Et Cetera: Notes of a Word-Watcher, Little, Brown and Company, 1990)

So there you have it. In editorial copy, the words should speak for themselves and the loud and proud exclamation mark should only be used with consideration and caution.  Well, glad that’s all sorted!

Sorry. Glad that’s all sorted.

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Having read Jakob Nielsen’s article ‘How to present numbers’ I realise that our University style goes against what his findings suggest.

We have chosen to write out numbers from one to ten, and numerals after that, which is typical for publications, however Nielsen says that it should be numerals all the way – although you can spell out numbers that don’t represent specific facts.

Anyway, as a refresher the University style is currently to use:

• Words for numbers one to ten, and numerals for 11 upwards, percentages and money.
• First, second, third… are spelt out up to ninth, then 10th, 21st, millionth.
• Spell out if at the beginning of a sentence, eg Eleven years ago.
• Dates are written day, date, month, year; Monday 1 January 2010.
• Times are written using the 12 hour clock, as in 4.14 pm
• Telephone numbers are written without hyphens; +44 (0)1227 764000.

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