Back in 1919, William Strunk Jr. produced a short text he dubbed the “little book.” In 1959, E. B. White, one of Strunk’s former students, revised and published The elements of style [1]. Now in its fourth edition, having sold millions of copies, it has become an essential tool for many writers across all kinds of disciplines and media.

Now, in 2002, Jonathan and Lisa Price have produced a big book aimed at Web writers. With a light, accessible style, using lots of examples, the authors give guidelines on how to produce effective, readable content for the Web.

While Strunk and White’s book is 92 pages long, this new book has 507 pages, organized into five parts and 19 chapters. Although much larger, many of the practical and useful guidelines of the book, found in Part 2, “Human Style,” are featured more concisely in the “little book.” Take, for instance, chapter 5, “Idea #1: Shorten That Text.” The authors use 19 pages to explain rules like “Cut any paper-based text by 50 percent.” Strunk and White elegantly present similar principles in just a page and a half, in a section titled, “Omit Needless Words.”

The authors feel writing for the Web is very different from writing for older media. Even so, much of their advice on the Web’s seemingly unique characteristics has analogies in Strunk and White’s book, written 30 years before the first Web page appeared. For example, the authors advise placing hyperlinks at structurally emphatic parts of a paragraph, often at the end; Principle 22 of Strunk and White states: “Place the emphatic words of a sentence at the end.” Although the authors assert that, with the Web, “concepts that we have inherited from years of writing on paper begin to dissolve,” the resonances of Part 2 with Elements suggest this might be too bold a claim.

The book’s bibliography does not list Strunk and White. One author who does feature prominently is Jakob Nielsen, Web guru and author of Designing Web usability [2], also published by New Riders. Much of the time, Part 2 feels like a reworking of Nielsen’s ideas to make them (slightly) more relevant to Web writers. The authors also draw widely on other work in the areas of human-computer interaction, psychology, and marketing. The problem is not that the authors hide the source of their suggestions (they cite extensively), but that there seems to be very little added value.

Of the other four parts of the book (“Net Spirit,” “Genres,” “Become a Pro,” and “Backup”), the first is the only one that provides really thought-provoking material. It attempts to identify novel Web features that might affect how writers go about their jobs.

Some of the points, though, need to be elaborated to become convincing. For example, a print newspaper editor, sifting through thousands of reader letters, might disagree with the authors’ assertion that the Web has a new, active audience, while old media addresses a quiet, passive one.

Part 1 also flirts with explaining Web technologies and techniques like XML and object-oriented document structuring. These discussions are interesting, but leave the reader wanting to know more about the practicalities: what authoring tools exist to help users cope with the technological demands?

Part 3, “Genres,” gives some basic advice and case-study examples for a range of writing styles, such as customer help and marketing. Most of this section is about producing convincing content, so that people will consume a service or buy a product. The entire book, in fact, is pitched at writers of consumer-oriented sites. Although the book heralds itself as “a new rhetoric for writing in the digital age,” its tone and advice are not suited to people interested in writing for the education, health, scientific, or other such communities. The styles and approaches suggested may also be much less appropriate for a non-North American audience.

Part 4, “Become a Pro,” contains credible and useful career advice, based on the authors’ own experience, for people who want to break into Web writing. Part 5, “Backup” contains listings of Web sites aimed at writers and a bibliography.

One of the perceived failings of the Web is that while it has vastly increased the amount material available to people, much of it is poorly written and of little value. This book will definitely help improve the situation, but a budding Web writer might be better served by getting hold of Strunk and White’s little book and reading Nielsen’s discussions, either for free online at www.useit.com, or in his Web usability volume [2].

Review by:  Matt Jones