What do you think?
Rate this book
Hot Text: Web Writing that Works
Attention, Web writers! This book will show you how to craft prose that grabs your guests' attention, changes their attitudes, and convinces them to act. You'll learn how to make your style fast, tight, and scannable. You'll cook up links that people love to click, menus that mean something, and pages of text that search engines rank high. You'll learn how to write great Web help, FAQs, responses to customers, marketing copy, press releases, news articles, e-mail newsletters, Webzine raves, or your own Web resume. Case studies show real-life examples you can follow. No matter what you write on the Web, you'll see how to personalize, build communities, and burst out of the conventional with your own honest style.
528 pages, Paperback
First published January 11, 2002
1 person is currently reading
58 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
September 11, 2010
Hot Text, Web Writing That Works by Jonathan and Lisa Price is a book about how to write for the internet. Writing on the internet is very different than writing in print. Print has a much higher resolution for lettering and is much easier to look at. Web pages are somewhat fuzzy and indistinct. People read 25% slower on the web than on the printed page.
Readers are also not very patient with websites. Most don't want to have scroll down through multiple screens. They want to read everything on the first screen most of the time. Long articles are often not appreciated.
Because it is harder to read, many people want to have their information up front. You need to summarize what you are writing about at the beginning not the end. You also need headings for your subjects which clearly describe what you are writing about.
The focus is on immediacy. Paragraphs need to be short and to the point. The authors give numerous examples of how to reduce the amount of verbiage while writing. The point is to shorten your words, tighten your paragraphs and arrange your headings so people can understand quickly what you are writing about.
In addition, unlike a printed page, a website page is viewed as an object. There are also images and links embedded in each page. Most people want to see images with their text illustrating what the website is about. Links should be short and easy to read. Also, long lists should be broken up into bullet points if possible.
The point of this book is to make your writing more readable and usable for the internet. The book focuses on business and marketing writing. How to write a proper faq, customer service page, checkout for credit cards, and design a blog are discussed.
This book will help you write cleaner copy and create clarity in your thinking when you are writing on the internet. I thought it was quite useful to read. I think you will too.
Readers are also not very patient with websites. Most don't want to have scroll down through multiple screens. They want to read everything on the first screen most of the time. Long articles are often not appreciated.
Because it is harder to read, many people want to have their information up front. You need to summarize what you are writing about at the beginning not the end. You also need headings for your subjects which clearly describe what you are writing about.
The focus is on immediacy. Paragraphs need to be short and to the point. The authors give numerous examples of how to reduce the amount of verbiage while writing. The point is to shorten your words, tighten your paragraphs and arrange your headings so people can understand quickly what you are writing about.
In addition, unlike a printed page, a website page is viewed as an object. There are also images and links embedded in each page. Most people want to see images with their text illustrating what the website is about. Links should be short and easy to read. Also, long lists should be broken up into bullet points if possible.
The point of this book is to make your writing more readable and usable for the internet. The book focuses on business and marketing writing. How to write a proper faq, customer service page, checkout for credit cards, and design a blog are discussed.
This book will help you write cleaner copy and create clarity in your thinking when you are writing on the internet. I thought it was quite useful to read. I think you will too.
August 4, 2011
I didn't read this book all the way through when I first bought it. Instead, I approached it much like a Web site--I dipped into the sections that most drew my interest. Only much later did I complete a cover-to-cover reading.
It lent itself quite well to the former approach. Of the five parts, four are quite strong: sections on becoming a professional Web writer or editor, the basic principles of Web writing, and adapting one's style for various common genres, as well as a section listing useful Web sites and an extensive bibliography.
The section I found least useful--indeed, at times almost incomprehensible, compared to the book's typical tone and stated goals--was the first, which starts strongly enough (with an overview of analyzing audience and purpose, always vital before beginning any writing project), but suddenly devolves into a jarringly out-of-place chapter on object-oriented environments that seems better suited to programmers than to writers. If this information *is* somehow important for would-be writers, the Prices failed to make its importance clear to me--and failed to make the subject itself any less than murky.
As an editor, I'd have either cut that chapter or relegated it to an appendix, where interested readers could get at it while others enjoyed and learned from the rest of the text.
Still, this quibble is minor, given that the problem chapter represents only 5% of an otherwise excellent effort.
Recommended.
It lent itself quite well to the former approach. Of the five parts, four are quite strong: sections on becoming a professional Web writer or editor, the basic principles of Web writing, and adapting one's style for various common genres, as well as a section listing useful Web sites and an extensive bibliography.
The section I found least useful--indeed, at times almost incomprehensible, compared to the book's typical tone and stated goals--was the first, which starts strongly enough (with an overview of analyzing audience and purpose, always vital before beginning any writing project), but suddenly devolves into a jarringly out-of-place chapter on object-oriented environments that seems better suited to programmers than to writers. If this information *is* somehow important for would-be writers, the Prices failed to make its importance clear to me--and failed to make the subject itself any less than murky.
As an editor, I'd have either cut that chapter or relegated it to an appendix, where interested readers could get at it while others enjoyed and learned from the rest of the text.
Still, this quibble is minor, given that the problem chapter represents only 5% of an otherwise excellent effort.
Recommended.
April 16, 2012
Jonathan and Lisa Price started out as journalists. Their book is packed with practical tips on how to write FAQs, email, marketing copy, zine articles and more. “Hot” text gets talked about, gets bookmarked, gets readers’ attentions.
A few tips from the book:
* get to know your audience. The more you know about your visitors, the better you can write for them.
* keep your paragraphs chunky
* make your paragraphs short. Let your readers skip and skim.
* use two and three levels of headings. Subheads help readers skim.
* write about only one idea or topic per paragraph
* leave a trail of breadcrumbs, so your readers won’t get lost
* link for a good reason, not just to click and read
* write questions (FAQs) in the persona of the guest (e.g., how do I order; How do I find what I’m looking for?)
One of my favorite points: remember that, for readers on the web, your words appear and disappear in moments. Readers do not linger on the page as they would in a book.
A few tips from the book:
* get to know your audience. The more you know about your visitors, the better you can write for them.
* keep your paragraphs chunky
* make your paragraphs short. Let your readers skip and skim.
* use two and three levels of headings. Subheads help readers skim.
* write about only one idea or topic per paragraph
* leave a trail of breadcrumbs, so your readers won’t get lost
* link for a good reason, not just to click and read
* write questions (FAQs) in the persona of the guest (e.g., how do I order; How do I find what I’m looking for?)
One of my favorite points: remember that, for readers on the web, your words appear and disappear in moments. Readers do not linger on the page as they would in a book.
March 18, 2010
The first 1/3 of the book provides the same type of advice as Killer Web Content and Letting Go of the Words...Guess it bears repeating.
Notes:
Content should be: passionate, attention-grabbing, interactive, relevant, sticky, persuasive, informative, conversational, open-handed.
Reasons to use the internet: have fun, learn, act, be aware, get close to people.
Make titles/headlines that can survive out of context & that echo what users already know, with a twist.
Within a sentence, put the most important item last.
Within a paragraph, put links at the beginning and end.
Notes:
Content should be: passionate, attention-grabbing, interactive, relevant, sticky, persuasive, informative, conversational, open-handed.
Reasons to use the internet: have fun, learn, act, be aware, get close to people.
Make titles/headlines that can survive out of context & that echo what users already know, with a twist.
Within a sentence, put the most important item last.
Within a paragraph, put links at the beginning and end.
September 6, 2008
A bit dated, but some good advice.
Read
July 18, 2013Scimmed this. Meh...
Want to read
January 10, 2010Hot Text: Web Writing that Works by Jonathan Price (2002)
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews