The Big Guide To Web Design Part 2 Of 4 The Language and text of a site

Author: Michael Land (me)

Date: 13 May 2005

Introduction:

I've decided to put all the information I know that is relevant into one compendium. The following parts to this guide have been designed in different stages. Each stage looks at the four crucial parts to a website. The SLIP method (Structure and Layout, Language and text, Imagery and the Producer's Intentions). By following the SLIP method, everyone should be able to produce a site that is of excellent standards, no matter how good or bad they are at certain areas.

If you have not read part 1, then please do so. Click Here..

Language and text.

Basics:

The language and text of a website is just as important as anything else. This is due to the fact that this is your actual content, in which visitors have come to see. Guests to your site will be more interested if you have a great set-out of content, easy navigation and quality sentence accuracy.

Language and text differ from each other. Language is the actual tone in which it is set. Is your site formal, informal, teenage slack-writing (e.g. "I luv u") or is your site a promotional advert for some product or service? You must always take into account what your site genre is, to base your language upon it.

Text on the other hand is classed as the quality, design and quantity of the text blocks you have on your page. Quality is defined by the sentance accuracy; have you got all the punctuation marks in the right place, have you got simple and complex sentences. The design of your text is simply, where you put it, the formatting of it (bold, italic, underline, coloured, etc) and finally the quantity is how much you should or do have that reflects the genre of the site. Too much text on a teen's site is a death trap and too little on a promotional site is a failure.

Remember to always revert back to the site genre if you get stuck.

Moving On...

Now that a general understanding has been met, I can get onto the more complex and detailed side of things.

Language can not really be interpreted or understood anymore than it has been. So that leaves text. The text of your site is not only classed as another design feature, but it is one of the primary reasons to why visitors will keep coming back. Why is this? Well let's make a list:

- Obnocious coloured text will often deter visitors. Avoid going for over-whelming colours like pink, and cut back to white / black / gray.

- Generally speaking, most people scan read when it comes to looking at what a site has to offer. They often pick up on the words that mean anything of interest. By simply making certain keywords bold or underlined (never the two together) you can direct their attention.

- Keep your sentences short. It doesn't matter whether it is informal or formal language you are going for. Long sweathes of sentences annoy visitors, as they are more complex and take that little bit longer to read.

- Over formatting is one of the most widely spread site killer. Mixing bold with italics, bold with underline, italic with underline and bold with italic and underline is the worse thing that can happen. You end up over-emphasising the word. Use only one formatting option and keep to it throughout the site.

Content also fits in with text. Regularly updated content will make your site go on leaps and bounds. It is highly recommended, that if you have the patience to set a blog up or CMS (Content Management System) then updating your content daily or weekly will be extremely useful. Why? Becuase it is that feeling of pressing reload, and the page displaying something new.

Informal language often means that you can make slight inaccuracies with sentence structure, word play and etc. Wrong. With webdesign, it is a much different ball game. All sentences should be properly co-ordinated with the appropriate grammar and punctuation. The only difference between informal and formal, is that formal has mutch stricter rules on word use and adaptation. It can not be personal. Teenage slack-writing appears to have no rules. However, over-excessive use of this language can be the downfall of a site, even if it is for teens.

A rule for remembering how much to put on your site, always remember the 70/30 rule. 70% text or space and 30% imagery. This balance is what seperates the good from the bad.

Regards,

--mik