Introduction + request for writing book recs

[Erin Kissane]

Hi all!

I've been lurking on the list for awhile, but have only just cleared
my desk and brain enough to actually participate.

The quick intro: I'm the editorial director at Happy Cog Studios, I
work with a bunch of awesome folks (hi, Carolyn!) at A List Apart
magazine, and I sometimes edit books for New Riders/Peachpit Press.
I've been doing CS and editorial strategy work for a living for ten
years this year -- a fact I haven't quite come to terms with yet. I'm
thrilled to see the CS community emerging from the sidelines of our
industry, and really grateful to those of you who've been spending so
much time making our work more visible.

The request: I've been hypnotized into spending part of my summer
developing the Web Writing course curriculum for the Web Standards
Project's education task force
(http://www.webstandards.org/2008/07/31/announcing-the-wasp-curriculum-framework/).
At the moment, I'm working on a short list of recommended and required
reading for the students who will eventually take courses designed
around the curriculum. (And I've somehow managed to hypnotize Our
Kristina into agreeing to review the course, bless her overworked
heart.)

I'll be mining my own bookshelves and evaluating some new textbooks,
but I'd love to hear what you-all think are the best writing books for
new web writers -- whether they're "web writing" books or just writing
books or perhaps books on fishing that are actually writing manuals in
disguise. So...anyone have some juicy recommendations?

Thanks in advance!

Best,
Erin

[Maren Niemeier]

Hi! I've been lurking too and so really appreciate this prompt to say something. I'm an in-house jack-of-all-trades for a couple health-related web sites and have been delighted by all the useful tips and resources I've found through this group.

We have all our staff read Ginny Redish, Letting Go of Words - http://tinyurl.com/nazyrj. I'm looking forward to hearing what other books out there we should be considering as well!

-Maren


maren.n...@gmail.com

[amber simmons]

Hi Erin,

My go-to writing book is William Zissner's On Writing Well. (I prefer the original edition; some of the newer editions were hamfistedly edited). But it's wonderful and relevant. 

-amber

On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 1:57 PM, Erin Kissane <con...@incisive.nu> wrote:

[Rahel Bailie]

I was going to recommend Ginny Redish' book, as well. As for additional
texts, I haven't come across any good ones on writing structured content,
which is a critical part of creating single-sourced, semantic content. A
local university asked me for the same recommendation for their new writing
program, and I came up empty-handed. Anyone have recommendations?

Rahel

[Elena Melendy]

Nice to see you on the list, Erin.

My favorite general book on writing is Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird. Probably recommended reading for your purposes.

Thinking about other possibilities....

Elena

--
Elena Melendy
Content Strategy and User Experience
http://elenamelendy.com
el...@elenamelendy.com
Mobile: 917-517-1976

Content | Strategy | Experience | Design

[Erin Kissane]

Thanks for the suggestions so far!

I had Ginny Redish and Anne Lamott on the list, but I'd completely
forgotten to include Zissner. Fixing that now.

Erin

[Carolyn Wood]

Hey Erin!
I know you know this already, but I'd suggest that the list reflect
the fact that web writing doesn't (or shouldn't) happen in isolation.
A writer for the web should know about brand, IA, design, user
experience, business, etc. (The list really goes on and on, doesn't
it?) Perhaps some of these subjects could be covered by listing a few
blogs and articles because you find it impractical to say, "And read
these ten books on related subjects." It's important for them to be
aware of this, though. You may have already planned to cover this in
the rest of the course.

Wow, I'm so glad that you're in charge of this course.

Carolyn

[Elena Melendy]

Also, my best recommendation for a book on improving general writing style is Line by Line by Claire Cook.

http://www.amazon.com/Line-How-Edit-Your-Writing/dp/0395393914/ref=cm_cr_pr_pb_t

Strunk & White is obvious, but of course you want the Maira Kalman illustrated edition.

:-) EM

On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 4:47 PM, Elena Melendy <emel...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Colleen Jones]

Hi Erin,

Sounds like an exciting course! Here are a few more suggestions:

• I like Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace.

• I don't like Web Copy That Sells--that might be an interesting example of what not to do or a different approach.

• I think some of the tech comm books with an academic bent such as  are useful, as well. They get into some of the practical aspects of writing for businesses. (I don't think the curriculum should be completely tech comm, though.  Variety is wonderful.)  The books I used in grad school are outdated.  Perhaps someone on this list knows what the latest and greatest is.
  
  
• I like Dynamics in Document Design for being so comprehensive yet practical. History, typography, rhetoric, context, information design, usability--love it! I wish someone would update that and adapt it more for the web.  It was written just as the web emerged.

• If the course gets into editorial and publication process, then I think The Web Content Strategist's Bible is very helpful.

I haven't found a helpful book that addresses psychology and persuasion and their relationship to web writing or content, especially for business and other practical purposes (such as changing health behavior).  There are books about psychology and design, such as Submit Now and Neuro Web Design.  There are some academic books about persuasion and rhetoric, such as Persuasive Technology and The Persuasion Handbook.  There are some practical books about persuasion and sales or public speaking.  But I haven't seen anything that would really help a writer immediately.  I think Web Copy That Sells tries to address this area from a marketing perspective, but IMO it goes into more of a manipulative direction.

I also agree with Carolyn's point that it is hard to isolate the writing from other considerations.  I think some of the books mentioned introduce those considerations. For instance, Letting Go of the Words touches on IA and style guides, and The Web Content Strategist's Bible touches on CMS, SEO, and more. 

Thanks!
Colleen


COLLEEN JONES  
Partner, threebrick
E: col...@threebrick.com  l  T: @leenjones  l  P: 770-296-0121  l  W: www.threebrick.com

[Destry Wion]

One of the things I remember from my curriculum was not so much
specific books, but rather a collection of journal articles, essays,
book extracts, etc. that were hand-picked to focus on specific themes,
story telling and/or narrative, for example. Authors could have
represented various genre old and new (philosophy, fiction, tech
writing, science, poetry...). It provided robust exposure to different
styles, tones, techniques and what have you.

The initial collection of literature was Xeroxed and bound into
softcover manuals with titles like Writing Theory 501. They were easy
to use, easy to carry around (lightweight), good for scribbling on,
and full of mind-stimulating reading. They were probably low-cost to
produce too, which was a savings passed to the students. All around it
was a great thing to do.

@geoffsaur was my instructor for the Writing Theory course (U of Wash.
at the time; he's since moved elsewhere). You could pass inquiry to
him for theory ideas.

Just a thought.

[Rahel Bailie]

>>@geoffsaur was my instructor for the Writing Theory course (U of Wash.
at the time; he's since moved elsewhere). You could pass inquiry to
him for theory ideas.

On Twitter, he's actually @geoffsauer :) and is with a uni in Iowa. But
speaking of Geoff, he runs a fantastic service called eserver.org, that has
tons of resources on every communications / UX / web design topic you could
imagine. It would be definite advantage to this community to work with Geoff
to (a) invite him to part of this community - his work a eserver.org is a
testament to content strategy in action, and (b) secure a place for content
strategy on the site.

Go to http://tc.eserver.org/ and take a look at what he's done. It's quite
extensive.

Rahel

[Dan Haley]

Destry: you're right. Those "readers" (as we called them) were
awesome. I still have most of mine from undergrad and grad school.

I like Colleen's point about offering up a few bad examples, too. Some
of the books I read early on, when I was trying to figure out what web
writing best practices were, served more to denigrate my newfound
content profession. Granted, these books were largely about usability,
and mostly aimed at e-commerce sites, but they did a huge disservice
to web content, in my opinion. They kept banging the drum about how
"No one reads on the web," the art of "Not writing for the web," and
"Make it simple, stupid!"

Now, I well understood that a new publishing context (web) encouraged
a new kind of reading behavior (scanning), but these one-note,
monologic approaches (still spouted in meetings today, I'd add) are
somewhat to blame for 11th-, 12th-, 13th-hour content deliveries; zero
content planning in redesigns; and other familiar disrespects to
content that CS is trying to ameliorate.

[*Dan steps down from soapbox.]

Erin: by the way, you were one of my heroes in those days, because you
(and Amber Simmons on ALA) were writing about how truly usable,
effective content--that achieved intended goals and kept users coming
back to sites--was actually smart. And involved a brain on the part of
the writer. And had a seat at the planning table. Thanks for
that.

[James Callan]

This is definitely an oblique approach, but I've found it valuable: Scott McCloud's books Understanding Comics and Making Comics. They're not about writing, but they are about communicating information quickly in a medium that combines text, imagery, and flow. They're educational even if you're not into comic books at all.

Style and grammar books I prefer to Strunk & White: Karen Elizabeth Gordon's series including The Transitive Vampire, The Well-Tempered Sentence, and Torn Wings and Faux Pas.

James Callan

[Erin Kissane]

You are all great big heroes. Thanks for the excellent recommendations
and ideas.

I'm hoping that after we're done with the current round of
development, we'll get to build a course or two on content strategy as
well. I'll start finding out what it takes to get a course added to
the development list.

Carolyn: Great point. The course will be part of the WaSP "foundation"
curriculum -- a choice I could kiss them for, because good writing
*should* be a foundational element of web work -- and will be taught
alongside design, IA, and development courses. That said, I agree that
it would be smart to offer at least a selection of articles that focus
on the overlap between web writing and web everything else, along with
pointers toward introductory material on other disciplines.

Destry, et al: I think the course reader idea is an excellent one,
though it would necessarily start out as an electronic one for this
course. I'd planned on listing a few articles, but the peripheral
areas mentioned up-thread seem important enough to add a longer list.

Rahel: Wow, thanks for the eserver links. So much good stuff there.

Dan: That whole dismissive attitude toward web writing is what I
really want to get away from. Just as content strategy ≠ web writing,
web writing ≠ bullet lists and shorter sentences. (And thanks for the
very kind words. I've been super-lucky to work with colleagues who
really understand the value of good writing and of content strategy,
and I tend to forget how much slogging there still is to do to make
those ideas universal.)

...and again, many thanks to the rest of you as well for the recs and
thoughts. I'll make sure you're in the course acknowledgments!

Best,
Erin

[Elena Melendy]

I, too, love Gordon's books--but find their style somewhat arch and self-referential. Value added, in my opinion, but perhaps not the best choice as a base text for introductory coursework? So much depends upon the composition of the student body. 

EM 

Sent from my iPhone

[LisaTrager]

Hi Erin,

Several books I have on my bookshelf and still refer to time to time
are:
- Content Critical - Gaining Competitive Advantage Through High-
Quality Web Content by Gerry McGovern and Rob Norton (
- Net Words - Creating High-Impat Online Copy, by Nick Usborne
- Hot Text - Web Writing that Works - by Jonathan and Lisa Price

For years I followed a discussion list hosted by Nick Usborne - he is
really an emarketing guru. Gerry McGovern was talking about targeting
your audience before it was on the radar of most web development
teams. And Hot Text is a good primer that goes over all of the basics
for web writing.

Best,

Lisa L. Trager

[Geoff Sauer]

Destry wrote:

> @geoffsaurwas my instructor for the Writing Theory course (U of Wash.

> at the time; he's since moved elsewhere). You could pass inquiry to
> him for theory ideas.

Happy to help however I can.

> On Twitter, he's actually @geoffsauer :) and is with a uni in Iowa. But
> speaking of Geoff, he runs a fantastic service called eserver.org, that has
> tons of resources on every communications / UX / web design topic you could
> imagine. It would be definite advantage to this community to work with Geoff
> to (a) invite him to part of this community - his work a eserver.org is a
> testament to content strategy in action, and (b) secure a place for content
> strategy on the site.
>

> Go to http://tc.eserver.org/and take a look at what he's done. It's quite
> extensive.

I actually use the TC Library these days to supplement textbooks in my
technical communication courses, and in some cases, to replace them.

Textbooks often present a clear, simple (simplified?), persuasive
single vision of the 'best practices' in the field of technical
communication. This is good for callow students who want a simple
definition -- not my usual students. I sometimes find that a bit
contrived -- in my experience, sometimes there is no single 'best
practice.' Which article about writing résumés, for example, has the
instructions that suit all students, always? Which article on
usability? Which one on documentation?

So in my 300-level and 500-level courses, I often assign students to
read three works from the TC Library's category listings. If we plan a
day on technical editing, for example, I might give them the URL
http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Technical-Editing (which indexes 64
articles, rated, and sortable by year published, other readers'
ratings, or many other criteria). Students browse many articles, and
read three carefully enough to discuss in class. A few students will
have read the same articles, but many students will have read
different perspectives, even some that disagree. Then, in class, we
discuss the merits of the arguments, and decide what we consider to
the best view. Sometimes students read the low-rated works, to learn
about opinions out of the mainstream on particular topics. Sometimes
they read older works, to see how 'best practices' have changed over
time. It tends to help get the advanced students more engaged than
bored by textbooks beneath their level, and the students who have more
challenges also often report being able to identify better with online
articles than textbooks' tone.

I find this works REALLY well to teach tech comm (and won an
Excellence in Teaching Advanced Communication award this spring,
teaching with this method). And the TC Library has thousands of
categories -- more than enough for our sixteen-week semesters. :)

So I'd recommend that anyone looking for a definitive textbook
consider at least supplementing it with Web 2.0-based pedagogical
accessories. With a little bit of guidance (such as webliographies),
this can be enormously useful to make textbook choices less pivotal.

Best,

Geoff Sauer

.....................................................................................
geoff sauer . assistant professor, iowa state university
http://eserver.org/geoff/ . http://twitter.com/geoffsauer

[Richard M. Ravin]

Another issue with books is their sell-by date. I was just looking over
the 2005 edition of Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug. Great book,
really great, but what happens when you read in it a mention of a
website offering S-VHS video recorders on sale? The entire book becomes
wobbly. If minor details are out of date, what else in the book is? Even
Krug's precepts that are basic and timeless suffer from a reader's
suspicions that they, too are no longer best practices.

Time for a new edition, Steve?

<snip>

Geoff Sauer wrote:

>
> Textbooks often present a clear, simple (simplified?), persuasive
> single vision of the 'best practices' in the field of technical
> communication. This is good for callow students who want a simple
> definition -- not my usual students. I sometimes find that a bit
> contrived -- in my experience, sometimes there is no single 'best
> practice.' Which article about writing résumés, for example, has the
> instructions that suit all students, always? Which article on
> usability? Which one on documentation?

> Best,
>
> Geoff Sauer
<snip>

[Elena Melendy]

Hi all,

I'm hijacking this thread to return to Erin K.'s original request for recommendations for a minute. Erin, if I were putting together a packet for this course, I'd definitely include something by Geoffrey Nunberg. The section called "Technical Terms" from The Way We Talk Now (Houghton Mifflin, 2001) leaps to mind.

In fact, that makes this post relevant to Richard's comment, doesn't it? Those essays certainly reflect outdated terms and technology. But they would make for an extremely fruitful classroom discussion despite -- or even because of -- the book's publication date. Nunberg's entire raison d'être is pretty much to demonstrate that language evolves more rapidly than we may think, and that tracking those changes enables an effective (and occasionally devastating) critique of the culture. Somehow it seems perfectly appropriate to a discussion of his work to talk about how language has continued to change since he published it.

As for Don't Make Me Think, Richard, you don't cite a page, so I'm not sure of the context of that reference to S-VHS recorders, but I have to differ with you on the experience of finding a book's argument wobbly based on the historical moment it reflects in its examples.

You said, "If minor details are out of date, what else in the book is? Even Krug's precepts that are basic and timeless suffer from a reader's suspicions that they, too are no longer best practices." In fact, I come to exactly the opposite conclusion: Krug's points aren't undermined by whether or not the sites in the book are still live on the Web, or whether their content accurately reflects current technology.

His main argument is that usability has certain timeless common-sense rules that should be considered no matter what a site's purpose or specific content might be. He cites examples and resources from as far back as the '80s. The entire argument is historical, so examples of content that reflect outdated technology simply seem to me to reflect his perspective.

Frankly, what I really find outdated is the Recommended Reading section, which perforce includes no books published after 2004. Now that might call for a new edition.

[FYI, I'm looking at the second edition, © 2006, 6th paperback printing.)

Best,

Elena

[Richard M. Ravin]

You make a great point, Elena about historical point of view. But I
wonder how tech-savvy college kids will respond to a text that is not
supremely current. Many of Erin's students are likley on the digital
forefront with sophisticated mobile, Facebooked, digitized lives. Will
they trust a book that has out of date examples or not? That requires a
willingness to engage with subtlety as you read through. My fear is that
anachronistic examples work more strongly to push you away from any such
book -- a kind of visceral response -- than the other content works to
pull you in, no matter how wise. How do we establish credibility when
the audience and subject matter are in constant motion?

I wonder what the half-life is on anything published in the field.

Elena Melendy wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I'm hijacking this thread to return to Erin K.'s original request for
> recommendations for a minute. Erin, if I were putting together a packet
> for this course, I'd definitely include something by Geoffrey Nunberg.

> The section called "Technical Terms" from /The Way We Talk Now/

> (Houghton Mifflin, 2001) leaps to mind.
>
> In fact, that makes this post relevant to Richard's comment, doesn't it?
> Those essays certainly reflect outdated terms and technology. But they
> would make for an extremely fruitful classroom discussion despite -- or
> even because of -- the book's publication date. Nunberg's entire raison
> d'être is pretty much to demonstrate that language evolves more rapidly
> than we may think, and that tracking those changes enables an effective
> (and occasionally devastating) critique of the culture. Somehow it seems
> perfectly appropriate to a discussion of his work to talk about how
> language has continued to change since he published it.
>

> As for /Don't Make Me Think,/ Richard, you don't cite a page, so I'm not

> el...@elenamelendy.com <mailto:el...@elenamelendy.com>

[Coleman Yee]

Hope this doesn't come too late, but I highly recommend Adios, Strunk and White by Gary and Glynis Hoffman - very useful for general writing classes with very practical and useful examples to help students explore certain writing techniques.

Sin and Syntax by Constance Hale is a humorous grammar book that teaches you the grammar rules, and asks you to break them. What I like most is the many real world examples it has of interesting prose. 

Hope this helps.

coleman.

2009/6/28 Richard M. Ravin <rmr...@gmail.com>

[Elena Melendy]

Hi Richard,

Your point is well taken. I haven't noticed any diminishing of Krug's credibility--as we know, his book has become a classic of usability--but I'm not working directly with students, and he writes for a niche audience already convinced of his relevance. Newer authors and their publishers seem to be more sensitive recently to desirability of integrating published books with interactive materials--multiplatform, even, not just Web-based. Have you seen this article in the NYT about Nick Bilton's "manuscript," Byte. Snack. Meal: The New Business of Storytelling? http://bit.ly/V998X

(Aside: must be nice to work for the NYT and look forward to an entire year of advance book promotion.)

(Another aside: Author happens to be a friend of a friend. Are you lurking on this list, Andrew?)

Such efforts are cutting edge, though, and I'm guessing Bilton is writing for a general audience. And I'd be disappointed if he didn't practice what he seems to be preaching. I'm glad he's anticipating the kind of discussion we're having at the moment!

EM