Overview: Writing content

Financial writing is full of jargon and complexity. But a series of research suggests that investors are drawn to simple, clear writing with short sentences. The simple reason is that complex writing is off-putting — people tune out and find it dull, a fact confirmed by neuroscience research.

In this guide, I’m going to teach you my step-by-step process for writing high-converting website copy.

The smaller the word count (and in general, the more concise your online communication), the more users will comprehend and retain your message.

Aaron Berman shared some useful writing tips for anyone writing on complex issues that he learned writing the (US) President's Daily Briefs. Check out the five tips below, illustrated with examples from Star Wars and Star Trek.

Unsure where to start? Use this collection of links to our articles and videos to learn how to write and present information that aligns with users’ needs and online reading behaviors.

...from news media to legal guidance to academic research, the way we write often creates barriers to who can read it. Plain language—a style of writing that uses simplified sentences, everyday vocabulary, and clear structure—aims to remove those barriers.

Plain language and website fonts affect the reading experience more than you think

"...when reading a book excerpt or newspaper article, students were better at recalling “other relevant information” when reading in the print versus the digital medium."

“We found, surprisingly, that no single feature of a headline’s writing style makes much of a difference in forecasting success.”

Forcing users to browse PDF files causes frustration and slow task completion, compared to standard webpages. Use PDF only for documents that users will print. In those cases, following 10 basic guidelines will minimize usability problems.

Research spanning 20 years proves PDFs are problematic for online reading. Yet they’re still prevalent and users continue to get lost in them. They’re unpleasant to read and navigate and remain unfit for digital-content display.

Tell readers what you’re going to tell ’em

The reasons behind management gobbledygook

“If you are not calling out sections of your web pages or prose on those pages with subheads, you are making a big mistake!” write Pernice et al. “If you take nothing else [away], please take this: Use subheads and subsubheads.”

Take a tip from the Times. Write headlines that: Average 8 or 9 words Never grow longer than 14 words Sometimes have as few as four words

Clarity, not creativity, is the backbone of good UX writing. Choose simple words and craft shorter sentences. Explain acronyms users might not know. Use proper punctuation. Be extra careful about things like cleverness, wordplay, and idioms that might affect usability. Above all, write to be understood.

Probably my biggest frustrations ... is the utter contempt they seem to hold content in. ... they won’t hire a professional copywriter to work on the content ... never teach content creators how to create appropriate web content.

Don’t start with the blah blah blah

Imperative voice gets shared. Imperative voice boosts email click, open and read rates.

"Users rarely read an entire webpage. That means you need to adopt a different style when writing for the web. A style that accommodates this lack of attention."

Want a handy list of the core Clean Language questions? Here goes:

"understand the digital reader’s brain, and to get a couple of concrete writing tips for your next digital text." "Nothing can surpass a text when it comes to transforming abstract thoughts into concrete expression."

The “known-new contract” is a linguistic concept used to describe how writers achieve cohesion between sentences by first presenting what readers already know (information previously presented) before introducing new information.

"If you can write a half decent document you may be mistaken for thinking writing for the web will be easy. However, the web requires a focus of writing rarely needed elsewhere."

The Europa Web Guide is the official rulebook for the European Commission's web presence, covering editorial, legal, technical, visual and contractual aspects. All European Commission web sites must observe the rules and guidelines it contains. Web practitioners are invited to observe its contents and keep abreast of updates.

Quick accessibility checklist (by European Commission)

Writing tips from "Writing for the European Commission web presence"

From now, house style guide recommends terms such as ‘climate crisis’ and ‘global heating’

Gerry McGovern on skills needed for digital communication people. For example: - choose the right word to drive action; - make it easy finding content allowing users to complete a task quickly; - design for maintenance and evolution; - love metadata, be an information architect. I wished I had all of those.

People do not read online: "fundamental scanning behaviors remain constant, even as designs change."