MikePadgett.com

Wrangling writers: information design and content policy

— Notes on important themes in the close relationship between information design and content writing and editing.”

Carl Spitzweg’s The Poor Poet (1839)

Writing copy for online consumption still seems to be something of a black art. Most web professionals know what works, but figuring out how to achieve it is quite a different matter.

This article brings together a few of the themes that I encounter in my activities around the relationship between information design and editorial policy.

The shock of the new

Often I encounter writers and editors more used to ‘traditional’ communications, raised on a diet of press releases, white papers and speeches. Some may even express impatience with the business of writing online copy: normally this is just a mask for unfamiliarity.

Indeed it’s probably understandable that those who work with such copy will tend to focus almost exclusively on the message rather than the medium, particularly if their subject is highly specialised. If looks could kill, it’d be best not to mention the word ‘Twitter’.

Successful online delivery requires method, usually arrived at through trial and error and a healthy dose of self-restraint. Specifics are beyond the scope of this article but certain characteristics are essential:

• Brevity
• Structure
• Pattern

Writing styles and content management

Therefore when authoring content for online consumption, there tends not to be much room left over for personal style. Sometimes writers and their expectations need to be managed.

Consider a situation I experienced recently: a changeover of editors on a website consisting of 20,000+ units of content. In newspaper journalism the content model is often so strict that editorial changes are barely noticeable but here in public sector policy and statistics, the effect of the swap was both immediate and profound.

The outgoing editor had a fastidious attention to detail. He was concerned to substantiate all assertions very carefully and maintained a subtractive, minimal approach to copy. His replacement took a freer hand and preferred to discuss matters at length.

Both writers were drafting materials essentially on the same subjects, yet the texture of their respective outputs was markedly different: the former produced shorter items peppered with links and endnotes whilst the latter delivered lengthy paragraphs and fewer headings.

Involvement in the content writing process

When should the information architect take a hand? How involved should she be in the editorial process?

The answers to these questions depend on the environment. Some writers and editors will be interested in hearing about information architecture, others may be rather more buffeted by the tides of strong personality.

What seems clear to me is that some guidance is essential for those less familiar with the online domain, but any imposition of strict editorial rulesets will send out the wrong message and will probably be ignored.

Unclaustrophobic guidelines explained by common sense should be adopted more or less silently (not to say gratefully) by most writers and editors and negate the worst excesses of any prima donna. I outlined the seeds of this approach in an earlier article about testing content for relevance: it should just be a matter of turning principles into friendly advice.

Turning good habits into workflow

Here’s a quick reminder of the information design process at its simplest:

Data --> Information --> Communication --> Knowledge

Acronyms and abbreviations might well be the bane of modern communications. Why? Well, only prior knowledge gives access to the information, which is a subversion of the above.

In a technocratic environment, content writers risk making too many assumptions about the prior knowledge of their readers. In an international environment meanwhile, OTAN, PALO and EASS can all mean the same as NATO.

Online content writers should be encouraged to develop good habits and apply them regularly, then editors will ensure they’re kept up. The proper explanation of acronyms and abbreviations is just one example among many others that collectively form a corpus of editorial best practice and produce highly-skilled online writers.

Conclusion

Information design shouldn’t stop at the launch of a content management project or limit itself to technical development.

There is also an important role to play in the creation of institutional best practice and it’s a role that requires considerable sensitivity and lots of teamwork.

Internally, migrating and modelling content is a major task that depends on collective knowledge and must be completed in a collaborative context. Externally, the needs of the end-user must be properly understood and reflected in the published content.