Digital Media, Web Design, and Web Development by Ethan Kent | ethanmultimedia.com

ethan -at- ethanmultimedia -dot- com
six one nine - two four six - four one two zero

Style Guidelines For Website Content

– 2007-09-11 19:00

Why?

1. This will alleviate any potential concerns regarding plagiarized or spam type content.
2. It will create higher quality content that is more likely to convert readers to a particular response.

“What type of conversion?” you ask. A good article will provide a much higher click through rate than a poorly written one. People in the web community provide unsolicited links to good articles, not duds. If you want any sort of organic, unsolicited linking to happen (this provides more traffic and higher search engine page rank), take a little pride in your articles.

Grammatical Person

For a blog, I recommend that each type of sentence have a specific grammatical person associated to it . This means emphasis of one over the others, not necessarily categorical exclusion.

1. Assertive: Should emphasize first person singular.
   1. “I will make every effort” is more personal than “We will make every effort.”
2. Imperative: Should emphasize second person singular.
   1. “You should seek a lower payment” calls to action with more urgency than “Readers of this website should seek a lower payment.”
3. Exclamatory: I can’t really think of any reason for preference on this one.
4. Interrogative: Should emphasize third person.
   1. “Why hasn’t everyone consolidated” is less preachy than “Why haven’t you consolidated.”

Use The Active Voice.

For example, “I maintain this website” trumps “this website is maintained.” Strunk and White’s Style Guide recommends this as a basic guideline for English composition.

How?

First, you compile writing resources like snippets of other articles. Then you piece them together in the form that they are currently in. Some rewriting should take place in this stage in order to make the article flow. Finally, apply these and any other style guidelines in the main rewrite process. By the time you’re finished, the sources of your article should not be recognizable unless you specifically cite them.

Commenting is closed for this article.

Previous Article

Next Article » Corporate Blog Articles »