Tony Sidaway wrote:
I like your idea of adopting the Economist house style, but a lot of kids are taught in schools to write unimaginably long, tedious essays on quite trivial subjects, so they have to learn how to trim out the waffle when they come to writing for real readers.
Jakob Nielsen's "Writing for the Web" is not ideal for this purpose (highlighted promotional keywords?), but it's a useful start.
http://www.useit.com/papers/webwriting/
- l,d.
On 10/7/05, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
"The most notable difference between lower- and higher-literacy users is that lower-literacy users can't understand a text by glancing at it. They must *read word for word* and often spend considerable time trying to understand multi-syllabic words."
Hey, that's me! I never believe people who claim that they can understand a text without actually reading the words. Short words are easier to read than long ones.