From www.webstyleguide.com

1. © 2004 Ken Baldauf, All rights reserved.
Editorial Style
CGS2826 Web Design
Program in Interdisciplinary Computing
Florida State University
From Web Style Guide, Chapter 9: Editorial style

2. © 2010 Ken Baldauf, All rights reserved.
Documents written to be read
online should be concise and
structured for scanning.
Concise writing is always better,
but don’t dumb down what you
have to say.

3. © 2010 Ken Baldauf, All rights reserved.
(Back to) Chunking
The key to good chunking is to
divide your information into
comprehensive segments. That
way users will have direct and
complete access to the topics
they are interested in without
having to wade through
irrelevant material or follow a
series of links to get the whole
picture.

4. © 2010 Ken Baldauf, All rights reserved.
Page Structure
 Segment the content for easy scanning
 Use descriptive headings
 Highlight important words and sections
 Use the inverted Pyramid
 Place the important facts near the top of the first
paragraph where users can find them quickly
 Also discussed as “front-loading”

5. © 2010 Ken Baldauf, All rights reserved.
On the web,
more than any
other prose
medium, the look
of text layout
strongly affects
how readers
relate to written
content.

6. © 2010 Ken Baldauf, All rights reserved.
Rhetoric
 Rhetoric is the art and technique of
persuasion, through oral, written, or visual
media.
 Ethos establishes the credibility of an
information source.
 Pathos is the art of developing a positive
emotional response in the viewer.
 Logos uses reason, logic, statistics, convincing
examples, and depth of information to persuade
an audience

7. © 2010 Ken Baldauf, All rights reserved.
Embedded hypertext links pose two fundamental
design problems:
•They disrupt the flow of content in your site by
inviting the user to leave your site.
•They can also radically alter the context of
information by dumping the users into unfamiliar
territory without preamble or explanation when
they follow the embedded links to new pages.
Links

8. © 2010 Ken Baldauf, All rights reserved.
Poor: Click here for more information on link underlines.
Better: For universal usability, use link underlines to ensure
that all users can identify links.
For universal usability, links must be visually
identifiable with or without color.
Links
By providing different link colors for visited and
unvisited links, you allow users to identify the paths
they have already taken