A Passion for Commas

by Alan Eggleston

A writer friend, Will Conley, posted a thought piece on his Facebook page, a small excerpt here:

Hey, Passion. Righteous Indignation called…

When I first read it, I thought it sounded like poetry, almost Shakespearean, thus:

Hey, Passion.
Righteous Indignation, called.

And Will responded, “Oh, how a comma says so much.”

That got me thinking, too. People treat punctuation so off-handedly, yet punctuation is as much a tool of communication as are words. And no punctuation mark is more simple yet speaks more complexly than the comma.

The comma commands order in a series. It separates warring clauses. Just as important, it announces an introductory phrase, says farewell to the concluding phrase, too.  The comma hands us off in a letter greeting or conclusion, and sets off parts of a whole such as location or time.

You won’t see these many diverse roles for the period, the exclamation point, or the question mark – let alone the colon, semi-colon, slash, or dash!

Yet no mark is as misunderstood, misused, abused, or underused as the comma. I once accused someone on a corporate approval route of using a comma shaker when reviewing copy, because he seemed to indiscriminately add commas, and then I couldn’t make any sense out of many of them. One of our publication editors even added commas of her own, in an attempt to provide some consistency between all the writers and reviewers. Oh, the humanity! Among writers, these just bred confusion.

I got into a discussion with someone on Twitter recently about punctuation that indicates a “pause.” She felt nothing was adequately enough understood by readers to handle the job, including the comma, the ellipsis, or any of the dashes. I pointed out that in print, all had been well established over many tens to hundreds of years for their various purposes and variations of pauses, but she insisted that today’s reader can’t know what is in the writer’s mind by these punctuation marks. I think they can, if they are used and edited consistently.

That is why I still favor the Oxford (or serial) comma. Yes, I know, often you can deduce the meaning without using that final comma, but the goal of the writer and editor aren’t to leave a question in the mind of the reader but to be clear. Leave the questions for the poets and philosophers. Our purpose as editors, in particular, is to be clear. Thus, except in the case where I am trying to fit a house style in which they already follow the no-Oxford rule, I refuse not to use the Oxford comma. I nurture a passion for commas.

Yes, Will, “a comma says so much.” And we as editors owe it to our readers to give voice to those commas so that our readers may clearly hear.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle on the Web

by Alison Lueders

Happy Earth Day! I encourage you to take action today – however small – to make our planet healthier. Many small actions can have a big impact.

As I was thinking about today’s post, I wondered how I could possibly tie Earth Day to web editing. One of the mantras for Earth Day is “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.” In fact, that’s very relevant to web editing.

Reduce – use fewer words

This point was driven home to me at the Nielsen Norman conference last month. Fewer words aids reading speed and comprehension for ALL readers. Web editors have the skills to trim the words while retaining or enhancing their meaning. We also know that saying something in fewer words is often harder than saying it in a lot of words. “Less is more” on the web, but “less” does not mean “easier to write.”

Reuse – share the ideas

It’s a no-no on the web to write something once and post it verbatim in multiple places. But as a green business owner, I know that many people are unaware of why operating a business sustainably matters. Repetition is one way to educate people, So I may blog for my website and then re-work the same set of ideas into a client newsletter. Same ideas, different words.

Then I use the web to spread the word. I may share my original blog post through Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and so on. I want the idea to get out broadly, without running afoul of the “original content” police.

Recycle – when words become wisdom

Sometimes, an idea or a set of words is so true and so powerful that it stands the test of time. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” or “Be kind” or the Gettysburg address. These words are repeated and passed on and remembered. They are words that guide us in tough times and see us through to better times. These words eventually become known as something else – wisdom.

Web editors – as shapers of words and ideas – help share wisdom with the rest of the world. I think that’s pretty cool.

So, I find that “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” fits just fine into my web editing toolkit. What do you think?

Policing Links in Your Comments Section

Links in your site or blog comments section are good, right? They can be. They can also be bad. To keep them good, you need to police them.

Any link on your site – internal or external, inbound or outbound – will affect your site’s search ranking. The most important factor here is the link’s quality, and several factors will determine a link’s quality.

(Photo: Simon Rowe, creative commons license.)

Link Quality

Internal links (links to pages within your site) that go to pages with high quality content add value to your site. The closer the anchor text relates to the topic of the page you’re linking to, the higher the value. You want links to all your pages to show search engines the size and breadth of your content, but the more high quality content you have, the more value your site has.

External links (links to pages outside of our site) that go to pages with high quality content add value to your site, and the higher the authority and popularity of the page and site of that link, the higher the value. Again, anchor text needs to relate highly to the topic of the page you’re linking to (or being linked to), and it’s always best if link URLs use keywords, not random code. (Content management systems and some blogs will default to using random code, but you can often change to using keywords.)

Inbound links (links to your site from outside), including trackbacks, are less within your control, but can affect the value search engines assign to you. That’s why it’s important to look at trackbacks (referrals on other sites to yours) and monitor when another site links to you – if you don’t like a trackback you can often delete the notice in your own blog and if you don’t like an inbound link you can request that the other site not link to you; most will comply. One inbound link to avoid is a “doorway” page, which is a list of links between unrelated websites often in exchange for your linking to them.

Don’t accept offers to “exchange” links when you have nothing in common with another site. They’re just doorway sites, regardless of their sales pitch to you. If you don’t have a business or social relationship with the other site in which you would naturally link to the other site in your content, don’t exchange links.

Outbound links (links from your site to others), including those that commenters add on your site, can also detract from the value of your site. You would like high authority and high ranking sites, but in a comments section is less within your control. What you should watch out for include:

• Obvious spam – links to product pages or topic pages or blogs that have nothing to do with your content but are meant solely to benefit the poster.
• Stealth spam – written to look like a legitimate comment but containing poor quality links, usually with misspellings to avoid spelling filters. Website URLs and email names are often nonsensical letter combinations, again meant to avoid filters. Also look for URLs with .nl, .pl, .ru, and other international extensions where spammers often originate, plus use of URL shorteners meant to hide obvious keywords or odd URLs.
• Legitimate comments that link to low quality pages – spam pages, doorway pages, and other garbage content meant to fool you into allowing the link on your page but having no real value to you. Search engines will devalue your site when they follow the link from your site to this eventual garbage page.

You can often engage filters on your comments section that won’t allow comments with spam or with certain numbers of links and other parameters. Some bloggers don’t like to filter their comments; that’s fine if you don’t mind losing search ranking value.

You’re the Boss of You

I once experienced another blogger who used the comments section of my blog to sell her wares on my site. It was blatant hijacking of my blog to sell her stuff, never asking permission and never apologizing. She promoted her products and then provided a link to her product pages. I politely asked her to stop but she continued anyway, so I had to block her from my site. I found out through comments on her own blog that she was doing it to other blogs, too. It’s not OK.

Your blog and your site belong to you, and you set the rules. It’s also up to you to police the rules. That includes watching for links and where they lead or where they originate. Links may be good but they also may be bad. Either way, they can affect your search ranking, which can affect whether new readers can find you!

Time Management: Six Steps to Peace of Mind

By Cathy Hodson

In the fast-paced, ever changing world of online journalism, is it possible to still, as author/entrepreneur Guy Kawasaki tweeted recently, “rediscover the magic of doing one thing at a time”?

Twitter post by Guy Kawasaki, April 14, 2013

Managing your time is a must for web editors. News can happen very quickly, and you have to be prepared to have your day turned upside down at any moment. Natural multi-taskers, web editors learn very quickly how to juggle their responsibilities but still make room for the occasional emergency.

One of the most important tools in a web editor’s arsenal is time management. Organization and prioritization are integral partners with time management – you really can’t manage your time if you are not organized or cannot prioritize.

Here are some tips on maintaining time management, organization and prioritization:

1. Handle everything only once. Any assignment, any piece of mail, any notes from a phone call, any verbal order you receive – only handle it once. Take the piece of mail and do something with it – add it to a folder for a project you are working on, pass it on to a colleague, or deposit it in the circular file. Actively do something with it, don’t just set it on your desk to be dealt with later. Deal with it now.

2. Keep information and resources for each project together – whether you use paper folders, electronic ones, or a combination – use some type of organizer to keep everything you need on one topic or project together. The photos for this year’s election candidates should all be kept together in one place so they don’t get mixed up with the candidates from last year. The article your boss just handed you about mobile apps should find its way to the reference folder you have for mobile information. By keeping organized and handling this information just once, everything should be where you know where to find it when you do need it.

3. Try to keep one day of your week clear of meetings and interruptions. Physically block out one day of the week on a recurring basis on your calendar so that no one can schedule a meeting for you that day each week. If you have to relinquish for one meeting, fine. But otherwise, keep one day each week as free of meetings as you possibly can. This will enable you to have some actual “work” time to catch up on projects you need to without interruption.

4. Learn to say no, or at least how to barter. Keep a running list of your current projects. When your boss comes to you and says, “You have to drop everything for this new project,” you can honestly show him or her that your schedule is packed, or at the very least it gives you something to barter with. “I could move this project to the back burner if your new project has a higher priority?” The boss can then see what those other projects are and help you move something if the new project does take priority, or perhaps understand that the new project isn’t really as important as the other things you are working on, and can wait.

5. If you have a “time stealer” person – someone who is in your office frequently – either for business or personal reasons – set up a regular time to meet with them so they can continue to use you as a business resource, but you can contain their interruptions to one dedicated session. If they are in your office for personal reasons – schedule a lunch with them now and then to catch up, but learn how to say, “I’d really love to hear all about this, but I’m on deadline. Let’s do lunch some time and you can fill me in then.” Learn to recognize activities and people who usurp your time, and learn to handle them so they don’t handle you and waste time that could better be used for concentrating on the project at hand.

6. Even the best laid plans, however, can be turned upside down. Hurricane Katrinas happen. Learning to delegate important facets of projects to your staff can make them feel involved, engaged and part of the team. If you do not have staff to delegate to, one of the best practices is to break a project into manageable pieces. That way, when you can’t work on one part of the project because you are waiting on someone else, you can move ahead to another portion of the project and get it underway until the first portion of the project comes back to your bailiwick.

What are your favorite time management techniques? Please share them in the comments.

Writing for the Web – Highlights from the Nielsen Norman Group Conference

Last week I spent 2 days in a class called “Writing for the Web,” put on by the Nielsen Norman Group (NNG). They are usability experts on all aspects of the web experience, from accessibility to visual design to content. I wanted their take on how web writing fits in to the overall scheme of effective website design. Here are a few highlights.

Highlights

Reading on the web really is different from print. NNG’s research and eye-tracking studies show that people who read online find it:

• Harder
• Slower
• Less effective in terms of comprehending what they read

The NNG instructor used the term “information foraging” to describe how people read online. To attract and keep the hurried web reader, web writing has to be shorter, simpler and clearer.

Written content is key. Despite what your graphic designer might tell you (and I love the ones I work with), it’s the words on the page that have the most impact on users – not color, not format, not layout. Not blinking boxes or popups or videos. Words are the quickest, simplest way to communicate clearly with users. And they are by far the most effective element on a website for building trust and credibility.

Clarity beats cleverness. People are very task-oriented on the web. They want to conserve their mental energy. So encountering your newly-coined term, inside joke, or cultural reference is more likely to make them click away. If your meaning is unclear, they won’t stay to figure it out.

Surprises (to me)

People don’t mind scrolling. Previously, I thought it was best to avoid creating pages where users had to scroll. According to NNG’s research, clicking around is more disruptive to people’s web experience than scrolling down a long page. That’s why we take these classes!

Simpler writing helps everyone. I was stunned to learn that 43% of people in the US read at a lower level of literacy. Meaning they read more slowly than average and have more difficulty understanding what they read.

Simpler writing – meaning fewer words per sentence and fewer syllables per word – benefits everyone. Reading speed and comprehension increase enormously, even for high literacy readers. When you consider the time saved, and the greater satisfaction people feel when they can understand and make decisions more easily, it’s a no-brainer to take the time to simplify your copy.

MS Word has a grade level indicator. As in, “this copy is written at a 6th grade reading level.” Who knew? Probably you did. But if you want to achieve a target grade level for your audience, this is ONE data point that shows how close your copy comes. I now have this feature turned on in my copy of Word 2010.

Thumbs-up for the Yahoo Style Guide. NNG confirms that this is a good style guide to use on the web. It’s a guide – not the gospel – and NNG is quick to point out that part of a web writer’s job is to exercise judgment in applying any style guide.

Bottom line: Pardon the cliche but, “It’s the content, stupid.” No matter what neat, new technology comes along, it’s still the words that matter most to your audience. So take a bow, all you web writers and editors. Your ability to find those few, right words that resonate with your audience and compel them to act is a skill and an art to be proud of.

Responsive Design: Optimizing Web Content to Device Screens

Remember mainframe computers? Desktop computers? How quickly times change. Now people are accessing the Internet via PCs, laptops, tablets, smartphones, and coming up rather quickly now – glasses and watches. Who knows what is on the horizon? In other words, more challenges to presenting our content in a meaningful way will continue to be developed. We are in another tumultuous time for keeping pace with a rapidly evolving environment, and how we respond to this challenging environment can be very tricky.

A new report from Pew Research Center, “Teens and Technology 2013” states that “Smartphone adoption among teens has increased substantially and mobile access to the internet is pervasive. One in four teens are ‘cell-mostly’ internet users, who say they mostly go online using their phone.” Adults aren’t quite there yet, only 15 percent of adults are ‘cell mostly.’

Even with the proliferation of cell phones, and the multitude of other devices with which you can access a website, it’s a wonder most servers haven’t exploded in trying to please each device’s screen (or the screen’s owner). We in the web business tend to be eager-to-please people. We want you to have the best experience you can have on our website, no matter which device you use to view our website, and even if it keeps us awake at night trying to figure out just how to do that.

So how do you serve up your content to adapt to those very different sizes of screens? If you have ever tried to go to a “full” website (PC version) on your smartphone, you know how tiny the text can look, and you have to scroll left and right, or pinch or expand the page to be able to read or click on something. Mobile versions of websites can be equally annoying because they are laid out differently, can lack certain features that are available on traditional websites, and may not feature the full content of the website. Usually they have an escape route that will take you back to the full website, but then you are back to scrolling, pinching and expanding.

You have probably heard of HTML 5. It is also known as “responsive web design” or “responsive design.” It is a website design that enables a server to respond to the particular device you are using to view the website and serve up your content in the most optimal fashion. If you want to try out an example of a website built with HTML 5, check out www.boston.com, home of the Boston Globe newspaper. Depending on which device you access the site with will determine what you see. It responds to the device, the size of your browser (you can minimize or maximize your window) and even the orientation. If you are exploring what to do with advertising locations on your web pages in such an environment, you can see that there also.

Flexible construction, coding and design make for content that can be presented to all types of devices. This makes more sense than creating various websites (and duplicating efforts) for various devices. It is not without its challenges, though.

• If you still use tables to present and contain data, their rigid structure can be prohibitive to “flexible” page construction. Deconstructing the data and presenting it in a text format can be cumbersome and not as easily digestible, especially in this age of readers who scan pages. Presenting it in a Word document or PDF via a link on the page requires someone to click on a link to get information that is normally presented within the body of the content.
• Wide images can also challenge a smaller screen’s width. Some solutions include creating smaller images for smaller screens, or to hide the image when a smaller screen accesses it.
• Advertising, with its premium locations “above the fold” (or viewable in the first screen) can sometimes be sacrificed to a floating position at the bottom of a phone screen, or shoved to the bottom of a tablet’s page – not really an ideal location for someone paying to be seen.

How web content is displayed will continue to evolve. For more reading about Responsive Design, check out the following stories. Feel free to list your favorite resources in the comments.

•  “Why 2013 is the Year of the Responsive Web Design,” Mashable.com, December 11, 2012. http://mashable.com/2012/12/11/responsive-web-design/
• Responsive Design Newsletter, http://responsivedesignweekly.com/
• Responsive Web Design, http://responsivedesign.ca/
• Responsive Web Design Guidelines and Tutorials, http://www.smashingmagazine.com/responsive-web-design-guidelines-tutorials/

Are You Using Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics? You Should!

by Alan Eggleston

Two tools you should consider adopting for your web editor’s toolbox are Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics. Both are free from Google with a free gmail account.

Google Analytics

Let me start with the latter: Google Analytics. It tracks activity on your website or blog, including how many visits your site gets, how many are new or returning, how long visitors stay, how they got to your site, what they searched to find you, and more. There is a ton of information there if you mine it well, which can help you determine how to maintain your site. Google Analytics is easy to install: All you need to do is insert some code into your site and verify ownership.

Webmaster Tools

The former is equally informative: Webmaster Tools. It provides both data on your site and hints and tips on how to make it better for searches, which as we all know is key to finding you on the Web. The name may make you think this is only for a webmaster, but really, it’s meant for website decision makers. Whoever sets up the account can add users, so even if your webmaster initiates it, he or she can add you as web editor – or the reverse.

Webmaster Tools is a way for Google to alert the site owner to trouble: Are they having trouble reading any pages? You can fix it and have Google re-index them. Have they identified “unnatural” links? You can examine your links and fix the problem so they don’t damage your ranking. Has Google found malware on your site? You can locate and eliminate it. They can also look at your structured data to make sure it isn’t messing up the way Google reads and displays it.

More Useful Tools

In addition, Webmaster Tools allows you to tie your articles into your Google+ Profile for search ranking to help highlight your authorship. They also offer Google Places to make it easier for searchers to find local businesses and the Google Merchant Center to make finding products easier in a Google search.

There is so much more. Both Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools have blogs to help explain the services and forums for finding help. All can contribute to making life easier and more productive for web editors and their teams.