Time to squish the double space

Have you ever shared a room at night with a mosquito?

Tiny things can ruin what should be a straightforward experience. Don’t deal with the mosquito, and you’re in for a bad night’s sleep at best. Leave a spelling mistake on your web site because it seems insignificant to you – and it’s your customers who will be complaining and not coming back.

Writing great copy involves not only choosing the right words, but also caring how those words appear. Font choice and size, line length, punctuation, paragraph length – all these are part of the readers’ experience of your message.

Many of these decisions are subjective. How much space to leave between sentences, for example: surely it is up to the author to decide what is most fitting?

Yes, and no.

Where a writer decides that the once-popular double space (so-called English spacing) looks best, then fair enough. But my contention is that most of that time the decision is not based on looks – but because someone once told the typist that this is correct.

And nobody wants to get it wrong.

Let me alleviate the pressure on the double space defenders and point out that, on the web, double spacing makes no sense at all.

Double spaces originate from physical type

In ye olde worlde of typewriters the typefaces were monospaced – that is, characters were exactly the same width as each other (even the m and the i). Every letter, symbol, and even the spaces were the same width. This gave a regimented appearance to the text, in which a space between two sentences could get lost among the identical spaces between words.

Enter the double space – just to make sure no one missed the start of a new sentence.

However, on the web, monospaced fonts are rare. We write in what are called proportionally spaced fonts, where each letter takes up an appropriate amount of space. Add to that the short paragraphs that we write in, and the other design elements that make our typing much easier to read, and there really is no need for double spacing at all.

In other words, on the web, there is no double space rule to break. Unless you are a graphic designer working with a monotype font, there is no need to hark back to the days of the typewriter and get all uppity about the gaps.

A single space looks and reads better

Now we know that there is no rule to break, the main consideration is more subjective: what looks and reads the best?

Of course, it is a matter of opinion, and here is mine: I think double spacing looks wrong. When I am editing, I correct it. It creates little holes all over the copy, and disrupts the flow of sentences that are already adequately spaced.

By all means comment below and defend the English spacing. But I want to know how it looks and reads on a web page, not what your typing tutor said in 1971.

By the way, there is a sin far more heinous than double spacing. It’s called inconsistent spacing, where some sentences are divided by a single space, and some by a double space, on the same page.

That’s like having a whole scourge of mosquitoes in the room.

Won’t somebody think of the children?

Web developer wanted for the dream team

I am excited to announce that the team I work for in Cambridge, Endis Solutions, is hiring either a Web Developer or a .NET/SQL Developer. You can download the job descriptions and application details here:

Web Developer

.NET/SQL Developer

Apart from the obvious advantages of sharing an office with me, and the sheer amount of cake that passes through the building, I would just like to point out that we might be the smallest web sites and applications company to contain all of the following: Graphic Designer, Content Strategist, Business Consultant, Project Manager, as well as Developers.

We’re the whole package. Not a couple of designers cobbling the back end together and hoping that the clients come up with the content. Or a bedroom developer trying to solve marketing problems with bug fixes.

But a team interested and skilled in the whole process of helping small businesses get bigger through the web.

Right now, if we could code faster, we’d help even more.

Interested?

5 ways to prevent the portfolio problem

I recently completed some work rebranding Endis, the sister company of the web business I work for. As well as specific sales and support web sites, Endis wanted an umbrella site for their UK brand. Simple, direct branding, with links off to the other sites (if you get geo-coded off to the US site, that was nothing to do with me. Just talking UK here).

Endis are a fantastic company with pedigree in web site development. Their unique, versatile platform works for both small and large organisations; commercial and charitable, as an off-the-shelf CMS and for fully customised sites.

When I visited the site to take a screenshot and remind myself of what the project involved, I found that it has been redesigned already. Mostly just tweaking, but it has affected some of the content that was originally there.

I don’t mind one bean if people want to change their sites after they’ve paid me for content work. They own the sites. My work is done.

Except it does give me one small challenge: it affects my portfolio.

In creative industries, especially ones that people haven’t heard much about (content strategy, anyone?), potential customers want to see the difference made for previous clients. But when content is changed by a client – or is dynamic in nature – it can be hard to showcase the work that was originally done.

Even the smallest changes…

Even the smallest changes can have a big impact, especially on the coherence of the content as a whole.

It’s deeper than the choice of one word over another: it’s because taglines and headings and labels are manifestations of an overall content strategy. They are the visible fruit on a tree whose overall growth includes the marketing message, tone of voice, company brand, user experience, SEO and business objectives.

You can’t just stick apples on a pear tree.

The problem with portfolios

And therein lies the problem. Once clients have tweaked a few things, or the user-generated content starts appearing, or they change something about the design, it becomes harder to showcase the strategy behind the content.

Even when nothing changes, sometimes our contribution sits in with other elements that don’t look so hot. There are some other sites that I’ll never add to my portfolio because of the state of the rest of the web site.

I’d love to know what you do to overcome the difficulty. Here are five of my thoughts:

1. Show an unlinked screenshot of when the site was looking good
2. Explain what you did for each client rather than just pointing at the site
3. Include a disclaimer for portfolio entries
4. Offer another way to experience your work – in my case, the free sample
5. Do as much as possible to support good content after release (such as style guides and training)

What else would you do? How do you beat the problem of portfolios? How can you show off your work without other people altering it?

Show, don’t tell – better user experience from environmental content

Share Insight is the new support site for the Endis Insight platform. Because it is not a sales site, and the majority of content is generated by members (in forums) and staff (articles, guides, release notes, video), it contained little static content when I was asked to look at it.

This kind of content could be called supporting copy, creating the supporting frame for the interactions which take place upon the web site. Another term I like (and just coined I think) is environmental copy: the content which sets the environment for users to interact.

Setting the right environment for a web site where existing customers come for support demands a clear user experience and easy access to the help that they need.

Share Insight front page

On Share Insight this included items on the menu needing to be clearer and more compelling. ‘Getting started’ should have been ‘Get started’ to suggest action; ‘Documentation’ and ‘Release notes’ are developer terms – wouldn’t users prefer ‘Solutions’ and ‘New releases’? ‘FAQs’ had to go, if only because a lot of people don’t know what it stands for. ‘Help Topics’ might be longer but at least people know what it means.

I also pushed for a clearer information architecture (the Insight platform is well designed to chop and change content groups around, so it wasn’t too late to change the order).

Although scant to begin with, a lot of the environmental copy was redundant. It’s tempting to explain ‘on this page you can…’ but the golden rule is  always let the features speak for themselves. Show, don’t tell. If people can’t tell immediately that they’re looking at a forum and know how to read and post on it straight away … then it’s time to lay out the forum differently and rename the buttons. Otherwise the site will be crowded with noisy explanations and it will become too much like hard work to do anything on it.

Strap line and search box

Finally there were one or two legitimate paragraphs that needed tweaking, such as the front page tag line and strap. A sweet twist was to get the strap line to explain the site at the same time as inviting users to explore the site through the search box. It’s vital that users know what a web site is for and what to do next within seconds of first finding it.

Microsoft copy: Nietzschean emptiness with a Freudian slip

By now you’ve probably seen the monumentally embarrassing Windows 7 party video from Microsoft. Hopefully, you’ve also caught the censored version that imbues an entirely different meaning to ‘make sure you have the right devices to hand’.

And you’ve probably worked out, shortly after asking the question, ‘how could a global corporation with billions of dollars and swathes of talent at its disposal come up with something so crass?’ that it is meant to be deliberately bad so that it will spread virally around the Internet. No publicity is bad publicity and all that.

And here we are talking about Microsoft.

(more…)

Content strategy: as boring as it sounds?

The almost constant complaint from Content Strategists is that content is undervalued.

Many clients don’t seem to realise that once they have got something to offer, the first thing is to find a way to say it (how about on a web site, for example?). Instead, they want new web sites first and then they try and work out what the content of those sites should be.

Horse, behind cart.

To add to the frustration, clients often want to fill their new vessels with magical content. Magical content is content that appears in the last few minutes of the project, when everything else has already been done. No one writes it or designs it. It just appears, overnight, in the place the lorem ipsum used to be. It fits the rest of the site like a hand in a glove, contains no grammatical or navigational errors, and conveys perfectly the message that the client wants to get across (it also propels the web site to the top of Google, just like that).

In short, with all the magical content around, we Content Strategists are almost out of a job. Except for one thing.

Magical content doesn’t exist.

Although some clients still wait for it like eager children waiting for Santa Claus, hoping that in the morning the magic of Christmas will be manifest in bulging stockings by the tree, the truth is that there is no quick fix for content.

It doesn’t just appear. In fact, as my boss says, watch out when someone asks for ‘just’. It usually means that the person is trivialising something very important. People ask him for ‘just a button that does ‘x’’. I get asked for ‘just a few pages of copy’ that turn out to be the whole content of the whole web site which happens to be the whole platform for a product or service. That is not just a few pages of copy. That is the entirety of your marketing strategy and delivery.

‘Just’ nothing.

So how can we get content more highly valued?

On the one hand, we can help content to be appreciated by shattering the illusion that magical content exists. By teaching clients right from the beginning that what they are offering and how they are going to offer it are the most important aspects of a web site. The rest will follow. By organising projects from the content outwards and enjoying their success together.

On the other hand, it might be (just a teeny bit) our own fault.

After all, we call it content.

Could we be more bland? Is there a more neutral, banal word in the English language, than content?

Content is the stuff that is held inside a container. It is defined by what holds it. The content of a bag. The contents of her stomach. It is generic, undefined, and boring. No wonder people don’t value it. No wonder they want a web site first and want it filled up second (or third, or tenth). We call it the most uninspiring and insipid thing we can think of.

And we’re supposed to be good with words.

Obviously we need catch-all terms to put on our business cards and to justify our roles to our clients, but ‘Content’ Strategist? We might as well be Stuff Handlers or Filling Generators.

If you want to devalue your Developer call her a code-monkey. Take your Designer down a peg or two by calling him ‘Crayons’ (we do). Is ‘content’ just as much of an insult?

It’s hard to come up with a compelling single noun that describes multiple, eclectic processes. And I’m overjoyed that Content Strategy as a term is getting increased recognition, thanks in part to the great work of Jeffrey MacIntyre and Kristina Halvorson, who has literally written the book on it. I also love the ‘Strategy’ part – it’s quite sexy (or is that just me?).

But I ‘just’ wanted to ask the question: would it help customers to value content more if we called it something else? Any ideas?

Apostrophes: do you know the only rule?

I helped a friend recently who was editing some training materials. He got stuck on when to use an apostrophe in the following examples. Which of these needs one and where?

Type 1s are the creative thinkers in the team
In threes attempt the first exercise

That’s right – neither needs an apostrophe. 1s and threes are simply plurals. So no apostrophe is needed. Perhaps this is a little tricky, because of the question of whether to write out numerals or not, but I can’t help thinking that dealing with apostrophes is really very simple. In fact, it all comes down to just one rule.

So why do so many errors pop up with apostrophes? Why do people begin to sweat and garnish potatoe’s and apple’s with misplaced marks, yet neglect to give its time the necessary stroke? Correct punctuation is vital to credibility, communication, and clarity. Even Seth says so.

Perhaps some unlearning needs to happen. Perhaps if you could let go of the conflicting and confusing clamour in your mind when you’re staring at your words, and start from the beginning, it could be very simple indeed.

After all, there is really only one rule.

But before we get to that, there are basically two times that you should use an apostrophe.

1. Where letters have been removed

Simply put the apostrophe where the missing letters were. For example:

We would = we’d
Cannot = can’t
It is = it’s
Pick and mix = pick ‘n’ mix
Violoncello = ‘cello

2. To show ownership (pwnership?)

Simply add ‘s after the thing that is doing the owning. For example:

The mutt’s nuts (the nuts growing on the mutt)
Portnoy’s Complaint (the complaint held by Portnoy)
New Year’s Eve (the eve of the New Year)
James’s blog (the blog belonging to James)
All the reindeer’s noses (the noses belonging to all the reindeer)

That’s basically it. If everyone remembered those two simple rules, then the vast majority of apostrophe catastrophes would be avoided.

And to avoid the remaining few, just remember these three little exceptions about ownership apostrophes:

Exception 1: For plurals already ending in -s you won’t need another s:

Ladies’ night (the night for the ladies)
All the cats’ whiskers (the whiskers of all the cats)

Exception 2: Some ancient names that end in -s that historically do not take the extra s either:

Jesus’ disciples
Isis’ temple

Exception 3: hers, its, theirs, yours and ours don’t need apostrophes at all. When something belongs to ‘it’, don’t use an apostrophe:

This city has lost its soul
The umbrella was hers

So where are you going wrong?

Do you still get hot under the collar and start to panic when you’re not sure where the apostrophe goes? Are you getting confused by school rules that were never that clear in the first place?

Or is it simply not the way that you think? I know otherwise perfectly intelligent people who still confuse their left and right. In which case they need a system. Like recalling which hand they write with at the crucial moment.

One of the things that helps me to get apostrophes right is to remember why ‘s became part of our written language in the first place. It all comes down to that first rule.

There is really only one rule

Remember it? “Use an apostrophe where letters have been removed.”

How does that help? Well, back in the 1500s those who were lucky enough to have a go at writing invariably wrote poetry. It was terribly important to get the correct number of syllables in a line (usually 10) and when a line didn’t quite scan the frustrated poets would hack syllables off and replace them with punctuation marks (hello apostrophe) to indicate that the word had been crushed (or elided, to use the proper name).

Escaped (2 syllables) = ‘scaped (1 syllable)

They also indicated ownership in language by the use of the pronoun ‘his’, like this:

The Miller his wench (the Miller’s wench)
The sun his course (the sun’s course)

One famous, and beautiful, example is the line from Ben Johnson’s poem, written on the death of his seven-year-old son:

Ben Johnson his best piece of poetry

We would now say ‘Ben Johnson’s best piece of poetry’. He’s talking about his son. In this line, and to great effect, he has landed his 10 syllables. But look what Johnson had to do three lines previous:

To have so soon ‘scaped world’s and flesh’s rage

The three apostrophes replace the missing letters so that the line is squeezed down to the correct number of syllables. Otherwise the full line would have been:

To have so soon escaped world his and flesh his rage

Can you see now where our apostrophe usage came from? It simply replaced the missing letters. We no longer say ‘McDonald his restaurant’ but we do have the linguistic hangover in saying ‘McDonald’s restaurant’. Whenever we use an apostrophe to show ownership, we are reverting to the old construction of ‘his’ after the thing doing the owning.

This makes barely any sense when the thing doing the owning is female or inanimate or plural, but hey, that’s where it comes from.

I find that knowing the background helps me to use apostrophes correctly, because it shows up the one rule behind our two basic usages. What do you think? Has that helped?

Topics

• Content Strategy
• Customers
• Human Writing
• Meta
• Style/Grammar
• Writing the Web

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