by Wordy

Created on: February 27, 2009

A website has often been described as a "shop window". Literally anyone, anywhere in the world, at any time, can view your website, and on doing so, they make judgements about you and your company. You need to do everything in your power to ensure that the judgements they make are positive, that the visitor gets the right impression of your company. Whether yours is a business, social or personal site, good use of English is imperative. Primarily, there are two reasons for this.

First of all, language is used to communicate; in the case of a website you may be communicating ideas, or information about products and services, or the benefits of joining your club or community center. Since you are not there in person to answer any questions, you need to make sure that everything written on your website is easy to understand by the reader. Bad spelling and grammar can change the meaning of a sentence, or render what you are trying to say unclear. If the reader cannot understand your text, or misunderstands it, he/she may decide to move on to the website of one of your competitors.

As well as making sure that your text is clear, you should also make it concise. You need to grab the attention of the reader very quickly and hold it, and in order to do this you have to make sure your text is interesting. Good use of English will mean that you avoid unnecessarily lengthy sentences, where additional, unrequired words, are included for no real reason.

Secondly, with the technology available to us today there is no excuse at all for shoddy spelling and grammar. Every computer word processing package has spelling and grammar checking facilities, and there are plenty of dictionaries and "English Usage" books available for those who prefer the "old fashioned" methods. Bad grammar and spelling on a website only serve to make the writer look stupid and lazy; stupid for getting it wrong, lazy for not checking. So write your text in a word processing package and check the spelling and grammar very carefully before cutting and pasting into your website.

The best advice to follow when writing text for your website is to avoid being too wordy and avoid the use words that you don't quite know the meaning of yourself. Also, if you are unsure of a particular point of grammar (should that be a comma or a semi-colon, for example) restructure your sentence. These tips serve two purposes; firstly you will avoid unnecessary mistakes and secondly you will ensure that your text is understandable by everyone who reads it.

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