Creating exciting and interesting web pages and websites takes more than just fancy graphics and flash animations - they need to be lovingly crafted, and filled with engaging text. "Writing for the Web" is a complete guide for anyone wanting to write persuasive and interesting web content that will draw surfers in, and get them interested so they keep coming back. It also teaches readers how to adapt content from print media, avoid common errors, edit material for an international audience, develop content for corporate websites, and explore the rapidly increasing world of online freelance writing. This is an essential volume for anyone that wants to create a website they can be proud of, and that others will want to return to again and again.

- Hook surfers? attention - Write informative, persuasive Web text - Create dynamic personal and corporate Web pages

- Write prose as good as your code - Learn how to grab and hold readers? attention - Create text for the unique genre of the Web

- Hook surfers? attention - Write informative, persuasive Web text - Create dynamic personal and corporate Web pages

- Hook surfers’ attention - Write informative, persuasive Web text - Create dynamic personal and corporate Web pages

- Write prose as good as your code - Learn how to grab and hold readers’ attention - Create text for the unique genre of the Web

Publishing on the Web is a very simple task. Publishing content that works well in the online medium and communicates effectively is quite another matter. In Writing for the Web, author and freelance writer Crawford Kilian shares his insights about producing just the right type and amount of content for your target sites.

Kilian acknowledges early on his bias toward print publishing, but his viewpoint offers a particularly relevant discussion for other writers moving traditional content to the Web. Throughout the book, he emphasizes his three principles of Web text: orientation, information, and action. These principles wisely expand the reader’s view from content and grammar to the special interactivity and technical-viewing aspects of reading online.

The book is quite brief at only 140 pages, but contains some useful traditional style tips, such as using active tense, strong verbs, and precise word choices. Ironically, the book doesn’t include any screen shots to illustrate formatting guidelines in action on real Web sites. This lack of visual connection to the presented techniques detracts from the book’s effectiveness.

Nothing ruins the first impression of your Web site than poorly designed content or documents haphazardly ported to electronic form. This book isn’t an end-all reference to Web-content presentation, but it certainly offers some useful tips for writing effectively for cyberspace. --Stephen W. Plain

Topics covered:

• On-screen text
• Web-site structure
• Content organization
• Writing style guidelines
• Web text editing
• Corporate content
• Resumes
• Personal pages
• Marketing

- Write prose as good as your code - Learn how to grab and hold readers’ attention - Create text for the unique genre of the Web

Writing for the Web Wins
This practical book gives great specific guidelines in an easily-understood and instantly usable way. I applied a couple of principles from the first chapter immediately to my writing. The examples are well-done, and very clear.

Any how-to book that can be immediately be used within hours of its purchase is well worth the price. A CD-Rom is included with exercises and examples, and the book itself has exercises. Very practical - great job!

Oh, dear
I find it odd that several reviewers laud Mr. Kilian’s inclusion of basic writing tips. Give me a break! This slim book should concentrate on web writing, not be a primer for those who can’t agree their verbs and subjects. The information provided is woefully general and outdated. Mr. Kilian is an older gentleman whose main career as he describes it was back in the 1960s; his text definitely reads like a time capsule. Savvy professionals serious about learning the particular skill of web writing will get almost nothing from this book. A solid copywriting manual (Sugarman) would be better. I’m still on the hunt for valuable web-writing instruction. Recommendations welcome!

Plenty of buzzwords, but no substance ...
This book reminds me of the internet boom days - lots of fluff, but no substance. Crawford Killian’s book covers web site structure, organizing content, writing style, editing, corporate writing, yet there is no mention of any actual web sites he has worked on.

Yes, the author mentions his print bias, but if I were interviewing Mr. Killian to work for me as web/technical writer, the first thing I would ask:

Name me three URL’s (not your home page) you have worked on as a paid professional writer. Not as a contributor, but as somebody who had to take a collection of badly-written material and make a *real* client happy.

Simple question, and I think this would reveal Mr. Killian’s real audience for this book: people who don’t know *anything* about writing, let alone writing for the web.

Mr. Killian makes a good case for better writing on the web, but his lack of professional experience and academic perspective make Writing for the Web useful only to the dilettante.

Packed With Excellent Writing Instruction!
The "Geek" edition of "Writing for the Web" by Crawford Kilian was written for Web developers who are more adept to programming than sitting at the keyboard of a computer and cranking out written Web page content. This book will help them to write better content that will effectively communicate the purpose of their Websites, to inform their readers, and to achieve desired results.

To become more effective communicators online we must adopt certain writing guidelines that will appeal to readers, that will inform them, and then persuade them to act upon what they have been exposed to. Crawford Kilian assists Web developers to do just this. His thoughtful instruction will help Web developers to craft their content around guidelines that includes minimalization, coherence, clarity, accuracy, and correctness. This requires Web developers to know their audience(s), to generate reader interest and interactivity, writing for international readers, properly organizing content, choosing words carefully, avoiding biased and otherwise problematic terminology, and respecting spelling, grammar, and sentence structure.

Topics covered in the book that will contribute to better Web writing includes instruction on organization, choosing the right words, editing existing Web content - with examples, persuading readers to respond, marketing on the Web, understanding copyright matters, and FAQ’s about launching Web-writing careers.

This concise guide to Web writing is packed with excellent writing instruction that will set new Web developers straight on the art and science of writing with the online community in mind. The focus on written content makes this book a good choice for those persons desiring to start a Web-writing career or wanting to advance their existing writing pursuits. Recommended for new Web developers, small business operators, and for classroom use!

Will enable anyone to be an effective Internet wordsmith
Writing For The Web: Geeks’ Edition is specifically designed for those who aspire to utilize the Internet as an outlet for their writing. Internet veteran Crawford Kilian draws upon his years of experience and expertise to provide the reader with a convenient, easy-to-use Webwriter’s style guide that will prove invaluable for dealing with the rules governing abbreviations, biased terms, capitalization, compound words, and cliches. The proffered exercises will develop webwriting techniques and a wealth of practical advice will enable the aspiring webwriter to adapt content from print to Webtext; avoid common grammar and usage errors; develop content for corporate websites; even edit material for an international audience. Whether writing for a personal or corporate website, or writing for an on-line publication, Writing For The Web will enable anyone to be an effective Internet wordsmith.

Too late for this to be helpful
If you can cram yourself into a time machine and magically go back to 1994, then this book will be a big help. If you’re with the rest of us here in 2001, then find another source of help. The badly outdated information about the nature of the Web is only topped by the author’s annoying choices of "catchwords" to use throughout the book. "Chunks," for example, apparently means blocks of text containing fewer than 100 words (it’s also the author’s recommended maximum page length). Not so bad by itself, but when used repeatedly, and with variation (chunk it, chunking), the practice gets a bit annoying. In the preface, the author reveals a bias to print media, which is unnecessary if you read the introduction. I’d suggest taking tips from someone who’s worked regularly on the Web and finds it an engaging medium--instead of someone with a limited understanding of the Web’s potential who works on it only as a sideline.

Signs of life for Web writing
This thin and flatly-written volume will disappoint anyone hoping for a Web writing manifesto. Kilian brings no new research and an unimpressive bunch of case studies. But by making the case once again for caring about Web text, Kilian’s book serves a useful purpose.

Many pages of the book are taken up with advice applicable to writing for any medium: understand your reader’s viewpoint, use the "active voice", avoid relying on your spell checker. Devotees of that classic writers’ how-to manual, Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style, will find a startling amount of familiar material. So will devotees of Web usability expert Jakob Nielsen and his Alertbox site. A substantial slice of Kilian’s book could well have been gathered off a handful of well-known Web sites.

But Kilian also makes a series of points that have been missed or underemphasised in discussions of Web writing to date:

* The Web demands your writing deliver "joltage". A former chief executive of the Fairfax newspaper group liked to compare the newspaper-reading experience to a warm bath. Web reading, by comparison, is a 30-second shower - get in, get the job done, wake you up, don’t hang around. As Kilian puts it: "Computers condition us for high joltage. A ’jolt’ is an emotional reward that follows a prescribed action ... We feel deprived if we don’t get some sort of jolt at regular intervals, so we go where we hope to find more stimulation which, on the Web, means web sites."

* Beware old-style marketers who see the Web as another opportunity to pump a message at a commercial audience. In most media, the marketer hunts the customer down and delivers a broadcast or printed spiel that can be hard to avoid. On the Web, the customer comes looking for the transaction, with a million other sites a single mouse-click away. Research shows Web users are uncommonly likely to bolt at the sight of an old-style marketing pitch. A very few good Web marketers, on the other hand, already understand that the message of a commercial Web site must rely on a more subtle link with a brand’s values.

* The Web suits "response" writing which prompts the user to carry out an activity. In the offline commercial world an entire marketing discipline - direct response copywriting - has evolved to offer users spcific benefits if they carry out particular actions. Indeed, the long-established rules of direct response advertising copywriting often look remarkably like Web writers need to import these direct response lessons, in just the same way that Web interface designers need to understand how to convince users to click on the appropriate screen buttons. "The Web is a culture of impatience," writes Kilian. "Effective appeals offer quick and painlesss ways to respond".

Killian could and should have given his readers more insights on issues like these, rather than recycling better-known guidelines. His book does not deserve whole-hearted recommendation. But it’s nice to see Web writing getting some of the attention it deserves.