Improve your Web writing

Gina Trapani of Lifehacker fame has posted an excellent guide to writing Web content. It's very different from writing for print or broadcast.

Among her best points:

• Use explicit titles and subject lines.

• Write a strong lead. Get right to the point immediately

• Use frequent paragraph breaks. (I'd put it this way: Keep paragraphs short. One thought per graph. White space is your friend.)

• Use obvious link text. Not "Click here" but "click here for our guide to writing for the Web."

• Be brief. Less is more.

She concludes with one of my favorite quotes from Strunk and White's The Elements of Style:

Omit needless words... Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences...