How can good writing, and good content, augment the usability of a Web site?
There are several levels to this. On the most basic level, a well-conceived, well-written, and well-edited document is simply easier to read. The words carry you along, they don’t confound or confuse you. That has been true of writing since writing itself began, it’s not new to the online world. Text is the basic building block of the Web. Text plays a key role not only in terms of a site’s content, but also in reader orientation and internal or external navigation systems. In this regard, the role of text is somewhat different in the online world than it has been in the print world. For instance, It’s almost always a great idea to include some basic text that orients the visitor right up at top of every Web page in the site. Remember, people can enter a Web site at any point. So there should be text that answers these questions: • Whose site is this? • What kinds of information does this page contain? • How much information is on this page? • Who is this information intended for? This
