The science of organizing written information

[Azrael]

What Kinds of Writing Have a Future

by Richard Horn

Center for the Study of Language and Information -- Stanford University

My initial method— cut apart books

The way I did it was to sit down with textbooks and cut them apart into individual sentences.

I then asked the question: “What function is this sentence performing?”

[Nonc Hilaire]

It would be interesting to read what Horn has to say about written communications today, especially having to write so your work can read efficiently on a screen.

[Enki]

It would be interesting to read what Horn has to say about written communications today, especially having to write so your work can read efficiently on a screen.

Writing copy for websites is the worst.

[Azrael]

It would be interesting to read what Horn has to say about written communications today, especially having to write so your work can read efficiently on a screen.

It seems that he hasn't been active in recent years.

I think that what he has to say definitely applies to work read on a screen.

Put the most important sentences on the initial page with hypertext links to explanations, discussions, more details, etc.

The user can scan over most of the page and follow links to more information on items of interest.

[Enki]

When writing for the web you have to write both for the human audience and for the search engine. It's an interesting writing challenge.

[Azrael]

How do you address that challenge? Do you have any examples?

I think such examples could be useful to figure out how to do more effective searches.

I use words that rarely go together, except for what I'm looking for.