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Letting Go of the Words: Writing Web Content that Works (Interactive Technologies) 1st Edition, Kindle Edition

by Janice (Ginny) Redish (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 104 ratings
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"Redish has done her homework and created a thorough overview of the issues in writing for the Web. Ironically, I must recommend that you read her every word so that you can find out why your customers won't read very many words on your website -- and what to do about it."-- Jakob Nielsen, Principal, Nielsen Norman Group“There are at least twelve billion web pages out there. Twelve billion voices talking, but saying mostly nothing. If just 1% of those pages followed Ginny’s practical, clear advice, the world would be a better place. Fortunately, you can follow her advice for 100% of your own site’s pages, so pick up a copy of Letting Go of the Words and start communicating effectively today.”--Lou Rosenfeld, co-author, Information Architecture for the World Wide WebOn the web, whether on the job or at home, we usually want to grab information and use it quickly. We go to the web to get answers to questions or to complete tasks – to gather information, reading only what we need. We are all too busy to read much on the web.This book helps you write successfully for web users. It offers strategy, process, and tactics for creating or revising content for the web. It helps you plan, organize, write, design, and test web content that will make web users come back again and again to your site. Learn how to create usable and useful content for the web from the master − Ginny Redish. Ginny has taught and mentored hundreds of writers, information designers, and content owners in the principles and secrets of creating web information that is easy to scan, easy to read, and easy to use. This practical, informative book will help anyone creating web content do it better.Features* Clearly-explained guidelines with full color illustrations and examples from actual web sites throughout the book. * Written in easy-to-read style with many "befores" and "afters."* Specific guidelines for web-based press releases, legal notices, and other documents.* Tips on making web content accessible for people with special needs.Janice (Ginny) Redish has been helping clients and colleagues communicate clearly for more than 20 years. For the past ten years, her focus has been helping people create usable and useful web sites. She is co-author of two classic books on usability: A Practical Guide to Usability Testing (with Joseph Dumas), and User and Task Analysis for Interface Design (with JoAnn Hackos), and is the recipient of many awards.

* Clearly-explained guidelines with full color illustrations and examples from actual web sites throughout the book.* Written in easy-to-read style with many "befores" and "afters."* Specific guidelines for web-based press releases, legal notices, and other documents. * Tips on making web content accessible for people with special needs.
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Previous page
  1. ISBN-13
    978-0123694867
  2. Edition
    1st
  3. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  4. Publisher
    Morgan Kaufmann
  5. Publication date
    June 22, 2007
  6. Language
    English
  7. File size
    22150 KB
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Redish has done her homework and created a thorough overview of the issues in writing for the Web. Ironically, I must recommend that you read her every word so that you can find out why your customers won't read very many words on your website -- and what to do about it." --Jakob Nielsen, Principal, Nielsen Norman Group “There are at least twelve billion web pages out there. Twelve billion voices talking, but saying mostly nothing. If just 1% of those pages followed Ginny’s practical, clear advice, the world would be a better place. Fortunately, you can follow her advice for 100% of your own site’s pages, so pick up a copy of Letting Go of the Words and start communicating effectively today. --Lou Rosenfeld, co-author, Information Architecture for the World Wide Web

Review

Ginny Redish, the technical communication guru, gives the most practical and useful advice about writing for the web.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B005NZ5K0W
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Morgan Kaufmann; 1st edition (June 22, 2007)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ June 22, 2007
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 22150 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 384 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 104 ratings

About the author

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Janice Redish

Janice Redish

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Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Janice (Ginny) Redish has been a passionate evangelist for plain language and usability for many years. She is an internationally-renowned consultant and speaker, widely-recognized for her pioneering work in bring clarity to web sites, documents, and software interfaces.

Ginny is co-author of two of the classic books on usability and author of numerous papers and book chapters on plain language, user research, writing for the web, and other topics. Reviewers have raved about her most recent book, Letting Go of the Words – Writing Web Content that Works.

Highly sought after as a speaker and workshop leader, Ginny is a dynamic instructor who has trained thousands of writers and subject matter specialists in the U.S., Canada, Asia, and Europe in how to write clearly. Ginny has keynoted conferences in the U.S., China, England, Finland, Norway, The Netherlands, Slovenia, and Spain.

As President of Redish & Associates, Inc. in Bethesda, Maryland, USA, Ginny works with private companies, government agencies, and non-profit organizations to help them make their web sites meet both their business goals and their site visitors' needs.

Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5
104 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Nina Alter
5.0 out of 5 stars Awesome book, awful title
Reviewed in the United States on May 2, 2010
Verified Purchase
This is by far the book I most frequently recommend to folks, who are just beginning to grok content creation for the web. It *is* so different than sitting down to write a Word document- and this book masterfully outlines the hows and whys around that, in the most empowering way possible. It has saved me so much time going-in to documents and re-formatting everything for presentation on the web, on so many occasions. As a designer, I also appreciate how it outlines the client-nebulous process of Persona creation, and how it validates balanced information-design with laying-out typography, lists, bullets, headers, and hyperlinks.

Only frustration: The title makes it sound almost punitive... and I feel awkward recommending it to clients, as if I'm acknowledging they're doing something wrong and need to "let go" of what they're doing wrong. While, yes- duh- they're clearly in a space I'm working towards liberating them from... it's just an awkward stumbling point at a critical juncture before the lay person ultimately buys the book. I wish the title was more empowering, and a little less punitive. I feel that'd make it an easier buy for lay folks buying the book, as recommended to by their designers. "You're Not The Dummy: The Document Is!" (or, erm, something... :D)

Also- while I love Morgan-Kaufman's library, all of the books have the horsiest of layouts. They all "look" like stodgy computer books, and as a designer it's my purpose with clients to make their sites beautiful. It's also my purpose to bring the best Visual Designers onto projects I work on, and to prosthelitize the importance of Visual Design as a key component in usability, at every juncture. The latter is more a sidenote- fyi, if anyone's reading... I say the above with lots of love. Keep up the awesome repertoire!
4 people found this helpful
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David F
5.0 out of 5 stars An Amazing Book! If you write web content, just buy it!!!
Reviewed in the United States on February 23, 2011
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Where to begin? Writing interesting and helpful information is challenging for most of us. Writing for web browsers is much more difficult. The author continually brings the reader to look from the web browser's point of view. What are they looking for? Make it quick and easy for them. Help them find what they want. Otherwise, they'll bounce.

She covers each element of a web site, how to write, and how to make it look. The result is clear and easy to understand. This is extremely helpful. Most importantly, the book is full of screen shots of both good and bad web pages. What is right and what is wrong are clearly pointed out. Again, extremely helpful.

Now something that may not be obvious. Actually putting into practice what the author teaches is hard work. Why? For me it seems that I actually had to learn how to think differently. I read the book, studied it, and pondered it. I could understand how important the concepts are, but I could not put them into practice.

Finally in desperation I went to the beach alone for five days seeking a break through. For two days I basically watched waves and paced on the beach. I still couldn't do anything. Finally, I began to write. Slowly the things that were taught found their way onto my pages. Often I found myself reverting to old writing habits. I had to discard that work and try again.

I'm convinced my brain had to create new neural pathways to allow me to do the work. The change is that radical! However, I now can see how helpful and truly needed this teaching is for building effective web site pages.
3 people found this helpful
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Mil
5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing book on its own even better with...
Reviewed in the United States on December 28, 2009
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This is an excellent book on how to: structure a page, write content and generally make your site more professional.

Letting go of the words is a very practical, easy to read book. In our organization it is the foundation of the best practice guidelines for writing for the web.

Once you have read Ginny's book you will be eager to put her suggestions into practice. And, that's when the creative block sets in. You can easily fix the glaring errors on your own website and this is a great place to start. But to create truly remarkable content go and get yourself  Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs (The New Rules of Social Media) . This book will make you think about what you are writing or have written.

With 'Inbound Marketing' in hand your content style will change for the better and by applying Ginny's principles you will have an amazing site.

For me, much of this new style of electronic marketing has come together with the books I mentioned. But when you add another thought provoking book like  Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery , not only will your presentations take a new twist, but when you extend the principles of imagery to your website, the images you select will truly enhance the written content.

At our next conference, our presenters will present using the Zen techniques and no longer be giving out handouts, instead content will be written as blogs on our website for all to share and easily access. These books nurture creative thinking and pragmatic solutions!
8 people found this helpful
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Deann Miller
4.0 out of 5 stars Letting Go of the Words - Great Book
Reviewed in the United States on March 25, 2010
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As supervisor of the technical writers at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, after reading and reviewing this book, I bought nine additional copies to use as the text book for an in-house training class I am teaching. As technical writers for the Web, I thought this book would help us learn to writer better for the Web, as well as how to work better with our Web designer. We are also in the process of redesigning our Web site so we are also using this book to help with that process. We are currently creating the personas for our Web site. A very interesting concept that we think will be very helpful in designing our Web site to fit our users' needs better.
2 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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cloudbuster
5.0 out of 5 stars The only good book about copywriting for the web I've read
Reviewed in Germany on November 23, 2017
Verified Purchase
Normally, these books are full of wisdom that you already read 10 times – or that you never heard for a good reason. This one is different. It's clear, concise, smart and leaves you with many practical tips that help you improve your writing.

Great book!
One person found this helpful
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ronwooduk
5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent book for web designers!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 17, 2011
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This book is a must for anyone who is preparing content to be published on a web site. It is full of useful guidelines, tips and advice. It is well written, concise and contains many examples to illustrate the difference between good and bad practice. I am currently redesigning my own web sites and will certainly be using this book to help me produce much better organised and user friendly sites than I have at present. Highly recommended.
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Nick Penney
5.0 out of 5 stars Really hits the mark!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 1, 2010
Verified Purchase
Ginny Redish has written a brilliant book here. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Creating a great web experience for your visitors is very important. Ginny shows us how to create web sites that work.
Highly recommended for people putting together their own sites - and for web professionals who want to create both interesting AND functional websites.
One person found this helpful
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howard smith
5.0 out of 5 stars excellent
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 4, 2013
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I really enjoyed this book and have poractically re written my website form the excellent tips provided, I would thouroughly recommend it
One person found this helpful
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