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I have pointed out the dangers of text that is too big and text that
is in lines that are too long, but there is another "too much"
category. That is simply too much text. Maybe your client insists
that every tiny thing about his or her business must, absolutely must,
be included. Or maybe, it is an information site that truly must contain
volumes of text. But sooner or later you will end up with a site that
has so much text it is impossible to create great looking pages. Plus,
you worry that the visitors will get discouraged and fail to read the
important information.
Hopeless? Not at all with a little planning and some judicious chopping.
The first chop should always be to tighten the text. Few writers produce
work that cannot be reduced considerably. But once you have the text
pared as much as possible, you can still break it up into digestible
portions for your visitors.
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Short Paragraphs
I believe that long paragraphs are simply invitations to skip that paragraph.
Short paragraphs containing only a few sentences are much easier to
read than the 25 line models, especially on the Web when a portion of
the paragraph may run off the screen. I will look for any natural break
to create a new paragraph. (Long paragraphs are tough to proof read,
too.)
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Top: break your text into short topics with headings.
Bottom: A short description of an item, along with an invitation to
read more about the subject keeps entry pages looking lively, and gives
you the chance to present more choices.
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Divide Logical Sections of Text
In the sample I featured on the front page, the improvement from the
original to the version shown at the left was all done with chopping
information into bits. Note the menu in the left column. This menu contains
many options, enough that it was difficult to read in one line. Breaking
the selections into logical sections, changes the visitor experience
from one of fighting to read the options, to a quick skim and choose
operation.
I am a big fan of a more option when used to reduce the amount of text,
especially on a main page. When a visitor arrives at your site, the
first act is usually to scout around for a few minutes before honing
in on a path of action. If you want to keep your visitor, you make sure
that the information that one visitor is seeking is just a click away.
Provide a short description of a subject, and end with an invitation
to read more, as shown in the sample on the left. If the subject is
interesting to the visitor, he or she will not mind the extra click.
If the subject is not what other visitors are looking for, providing
a short description gives them the choice to click or ignore that part
of the page.
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When you create text in a grammatically correct format, the words
take a lot of space, the page is solid and boring and it is more
difficult for the visitor to quickly absorb the important points.
Compare this paragraph to the bulletted list below. Which would
you rather use for your information gathering?
Bullets provide an excellent tool to present information and
offer the following benefits:
- reduce wasted space
- create visual interest
- information is easier to absorb
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Use Bullets
Bullets are the communicator's best friend. Bullets remove the need
for grammatically correct sentences, which often reduces the size of
the sentence to half or less.
In addition to saving space, bullets make it so easy for visitors to
understand what the subject is. A quick skim of the list at the left
will tell you exactly where the author (just me, not a famous quote)
stands on this subject. It is hard to mine the same information from
the paragraph text.
You can customize your bullet when using CSS, so there is no "ugly"
excuse for not using bullets.
Carry on to learn about using page areas to make your content jump
out at visitors.
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