Writing compelling Web copy while saving space
We all know the main rule for writing Web copy: keep it tight. That’s especially true if you have a limited amount of space in which to write, and are pairing your words with small graphics.
The key to that pairing is paring down what you’ve written, while keeping the copy meaningful and forceful. But as we all know, writing tightly isn’t easy. In fact, it’s darned difficult. Especially when you’re faced with the kinds of space constraints that I mentioned in the previous paragraph.
Here’s an interesting blog post which details the writing decisions made for the marketing site of a Web application called Highrise.
The key:
The first thing I do when I want to cut out some words is not read the original version. I just write a new one. I don’t want to be influenced by what I thought I had to say before. I want to think about what I want to say now. After I’ve written a new one I go back to the old one to see if there was anything critical I missed.
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