Writing for the web guidance material
Introduction
This content is a companion piece to the Writing for the Web training and supports the learning from that session. If you prefer, you can watch a video of the Writing for the Web session.
Why are we here?
We want to make the user experience as easy as possible. So we need to use language that our audience understands.
We also need our content to connect with our brand personality and our key messaging.
We want our content to be impactful, snappy, full of energy and potential for the future.
We need to be welcoming and approachable but we also need to express our expertise.
This will help us make an emotional connection with our audience. An emotional connection will mean they are more engaged with the content.
So we want:
- easily understandable language
- delivered in a welcoming and approachable style
- that expresses our academic (and business) expertise
- and makes an emotional connection with our audience
Blimey.
So, how do we do that?
Audience
First, we need to know who our audience is.
Core audience: potential undergraduate students. That’s 15-year-olds upwards.
Secondary audiences are potential postgraduate students, parents/guardians (who are supporting them financially), researchers, businesses owners.
But let’s go back to the 15-year-old.
There are certain areas of the website that are targeted directly at them. But they can, of course, go anywhere on the site. They may be particularly interested in the staff profiles of the academics. They may want to look at our research pages as that informs our teaching. They may end up on our business services pages because they are interested in seeing who our business partners are and they are looking towards internships and placements.
So we have to make sure they can understand the content on all these pages.
Now, we wouldn’t necessarily consider using exactly the same style of language on undergraduate pages as you would on business services pages. You may want to “flex” your tone in relation to the primary audience for those pages.
But here comes the mantra:
We want every single person who reads our content to understand what we mean – the first time they read it.
That’s all our content. For everybody.
And you have to consider that, for any one of these people, from 15-year-olds to business owners, English may not be their first language.
Avoid academic jargon
Remember, we want everyone to understand what we mean the first time they read it.
However, universities have an historical tendency to express expertise with jargon, complicated sentence structure, academic language and Latin (cleverness).
But research has shown that even the most educated (and clever) people prefer plain English. It saves time if nothing else. And, if we’re presenting content that any of our users are struggling to understand because of its complexity, we’ve failed.
Here’s an example. It’s a single sentence that expresses an important idea.
The evolved Djura-by is physically positioned within an environment that commissions a posited unconstrained ability to consociate with significant conurbations via disparate conveyance modus operandi on account of a perceived and actual littoral equidistance, particularly oriental and occidental.
I do feel enormously clever having written it. It makes complete sense to me. But what would our audience think of it? What do you think of it? Do you understand it? Any of it? If you didn’t understand it the first time you read it, it’s not content we want on the website.
How about this one.
Derby is in the centre of the country and has good transport links.
That’s much more understandable. And, surprise, surprise, those two sentences say exactly the same thing. And only one of them should ever be on the website.
What do you do if someone sends you content such as the first sentence to put on a web page (or in an email or a leaflet)? You go back to them and ask them to explain it in simpler language.
Which brings us on to …
A conversation
While we want to use straightforward language on the website, we also need it to be engaging and inspiring. Full of impact. So plain English but not plain boring. How do we do that?
Think about having a conversation. How would you describe an idea if you were sitting in a café talking to a mix of people: specialists (who know what you know), non-specialists, friends, a couple of prospective undergraduate students, and someone’s brought their granny (and English isn’t her first language)? It comes back to being welcoming and approachable - but remembering to express our expertise. You want everyone to feel included and inspired, specialist and non-specialist alike.
Another way of looking at it is thinking about meeting a potential student/researcher/business partner in the Atrium at the University. You’re being professional and engaging. You show your personality while being part of the University. You have a conversation with them.
That's what we're looking for on the website. We want our content to be one half of a conversation. And we express it in those terms. "We" are the University. "You" are the audience, the potential student, researcher, business partner. This is why we have our staff profiles written in the first person. Hello, I am ...
A couple of examples, you say? OK.
The aim of the University of Derby’s accommodation office is to provide each student with a housing opportunity.
And …
SMEs and established larger companies within the D2N2 area can benefit from the opportunity to access investment, part-funded by the ERDF, predominantly in the form of loans – though grants are also available – in this programme administered by the University of Derby.
So …
The first sentence is pretty straightforward. You know what it’s saying. But it’s not altogether engaging. And it takes a while to get into it. It’s not something you’d say. Not out loud. So what’s the basis of that sentence? How would you initiate a conversation?
We want to find you somewhere to live.
Where “we” are the University and “you” are the student. And then you can add in detail about our accommodation office. We’ve front-loaded it. That means we’ve got to the point straight away. And several shorter sentences are often more engaging than one long one.
Which brings us on to the second sentence. It’s reasonably long at 41 words. It starts off with an acronym (which is not explained) and then has a couple more of them, plus some sub-clauses.
We can help you get a grant or a loan for your business.
Oh, is that what it means? Yes, I’m interested. And, again, you can then add detail once you’ve got their attention. And explain what SMEs, D2N2 and the ERDF are. But now we’re talking directly to the business owners/directors. We’re telling them this content is for them.
Rewriting
Writing is rewriting. According to Ernest Hemingway. I think.
And, when you are rewriting, you need to understand what it is you are trying to say. If you are rewriting a chunk of text, don’t go through rewriting it phrase by phrase, sentence by sentence. Understand the whole and think about how best to express it in the language you want to use. This is particularly important when the content has come from elsewhere.
Take as an example the sentence about SMEs (these are small and medium-sized enterprises, if you didn’t know) in the D2N2 (Derby, Derbyshire, Nottingham and Nottinghamshire - two Ds and two Ns, geddit? - local enterprise partnership) area. We didn’t rewrite it piecemeal. We looked at it as a whole.
We considered: What do we want to say? What is the point of the sentence?
We (the University of Derby) want companies to know that there is investment available. And that they can get to it through us. So that’s what we say. But we speak directly to them (you).
Accessibility
Accessibility is about inclusion. We want to include everybody. We also have a legal (as well as our moral) requirement to make the content on our website (and our other digital platforms) accessible.
And accessibility includes the language we use. Long sentences, and long words, specifically new and unusual words, are particularly difficult to read for some people. For instance, if they have dyslexia. So use simple sentence structure. If you need to use new and unusual words, explain what they mean.
Going back to Hemingway, there is a useful online tool that can help you work out whether or not your content is easily understandable. The Hemingway Editor will give you a readability score based on the American school grade level. So a 15-year-old would be grade 9 or 10 (year 10 or 11 UK). And it tells you when sentences are hard to read (long with long words) or very hard to read (very long with even longer words). It doesn’t rewrite your content for you but it gives you pointers along the way. Other platforms are available, such as Grammarly.
Conclusion
We want to engage our users in conversation. We’re professional and approachable. We deliver what we want to say with clarity and brevity but also with personality. We use short, snappy sentences. “We” are the University. “You” are the audience. Remember: impactful, snappy, full of energy and potential for the future. We want to get them (“you”) excited about the possibilities.
