September 25, 2000 New Thinking:
Laying out Web content
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September 25, 2000
Laying out Web content
By Gerry McGovern
If you were to place the world’s 100 biggest selling English-language newspapers in a row, you would find no more than 2-3 layouts for the front page. There are only so many ways to properly lay out content, whether in a newspaper or on the Web.
There are two – sometimes conflicting – objectives when laying out content. The primary objective is to provide the most readable possible environment for the content. The next objective is to present the content with style, so that it is pleasing on the eye, and thus the reader will more enjoy reading it.
When you use a word processor or an email package, what color is the text and what color is the background? In the vast majority of cases, the text is black and the background is white. So, too should content on a website, particularly when you’re asking the reader to read a lot of text.
There are a number of simple rules in relation to laying out content on the web. Breaking them is not really the sign of an artist, but rather an amateur. Remember, classic novels are not classics because every second page has a different color and font, but rather because the power of the words.
Before long, a few standard layouts for content will become the norm on the web. The quality of the content itself is what will differentiate one website from another.
Here are some rules for web content layout:
- Never use underline in body text as a reader will think it’s a link
- Avoid using bold within the body of the text for the same reason
- Avoid using italics as it is difficult to read on a screen
- When dealing with more than a couple of paragraphs, use 10 point font as anything less will make the text difficult to read
- The font style that works best on the Web is sans serif, in that it looks sharper on the screen and is thus easier to read
- If you’re laying out a summary of an document on a homepage, make the heading of the summary a link, as the reader expects it to be so
- If the body of text is 10 point font size, then the heading should be 12 or 14 point
- If there is an image as part of this summary, then the image should also link to the document
- On a homepage, you may go down to 8 point for the body text as this will let you get more in. In this case, the heading size should be 10 point
- When presenting an article or other document, the number of words per line of text should average between 9 and 12 in the central column. (The longer a line of text is, the more difficult for the eye to follow down to the next line.)
- If the document is longer than 10 paragraphs, a table of contents should be placed below the heading. The table should be generated from subheadings found in the main body of the document
Reading on a screen is still more difficult than reading on paper. Flashy design may
look well on the surface. However, when your reader gets down to the job of reading,
they will not thank you for it.
Gerry McGovern
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