Chunk down and front-load your copy

Yesterday I wrote about the 'sticky content' course I was about to attend. It turned out that, rather embarrassingly, the course wasn't about sticky content at all. I was misled by a classic piece of corporate miscommunication, an email that read:

Sticky content Web Training
I am pleased to confirm you are booked onto the above course

In reality - as I found out once I had taken my seat - the course was called 'Writing for the web' and Sticky Content was the name of the company running it. Never mind...

However I did learn a couple of new buzzphrases on my non-sticky content course. They are two things you should do to your copy when writing for the web.

  • Chunk down: break your copy into chunks; try to use lists, bullets (like this for example), smaller paragraphs.
  • Front-load: Put the most important words at the beginning of your title or heading; put the most important part of the story at the beginning as well.

So there you go. My content is not sticky, but it will henceforth be chunked down and front-loaded (and there's a sentence I've never written before).

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