Chapter 5. Omit needless Words: The Art of Not Writing for the Web
Get rid of half the words on each page, then get rid of half of what’s left. | ||
| --KRUG’S THIRD LAW OF USABILITY | ||
Of the five or six things that i learned in college, the one that has stuck with me the longest—and benefited me the most—is E. B. White’s seventeenth rule in The Elements of Style:
17. Omit needless words.
Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.[1]
When I look at most Web pages, I’m struck by the fact that most of the words I see are just taking up space, because no one is ever going to read them. ...
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