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HOT Evaluation: Brevity (HTML)

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1. Brevity

Q: What's a Heuristic Online Text Evaluation?

A. An evaluation measures how well your text online meets the guidelines, or heuristics, we have compiled from research in usability, readability, attention, and design, and from experienced professionals in the field.

Q: What's the point of using an evaluation instrument?

A: You can determine the extent to which the text on a site achieves the brevity needed for effective online presentation.

Q: Why brevity?

A: Brevity makes text sink in, online. 

Q: How do we achieve brevity?

A: A writer must adopt half a dozen strategies, and within those broad approaches, a number of tactics.  Writing a short article takes more effort than going long. The strategies are:

  • The language is terse.
  • The paragraphs are short.
  • Marketing yes, fluff no.
  • Tangential material is moved out of the way.
  • Brevity is not carried to the point of ambiguity.
  • Repeating categories of information appear in tables.

Q: Why do you call these checklists a heuristic?

A: Each guideline provides a method for a writer to follow, or a heuristic.

Q: How do we perform the evaluation?

A: Here’s how to perform a Heuristic Online Text (HOT) evaluation.

1. Download and save the file with a name that includes

  • The site you are analyzing

  • The aspect you are evaluating (brevity, in this case)

  • Initials

  • A period

  • A suffix indicating the file type (doc for Word files, htm for HTML files)

Examples: ibmbrevityjp.doc, yahoobrevityds.htm

2. Go to the site, and locate a fairly typical page that has several paragraphs of running text.

Running text is actual content, not labels, menu items, or link descriptions.

3. In the file, type the subject of the page, under Sample #1, below.

The subject appears in the title bar of the window (not including ads for your browser) or in the major heading at the top of the page. Use whichever best articulates what the page is about.

4. Copy the paragraph and paste it into this file after the subject.

5. Return to the page and copy the URL for that page, then paste that into this file, in the line right after the paragraph.

The URL is the address of the page.

6. Type today’s date on the next line, to show when you collected the sample.

7. Repeat this process, collecting paragraphs from at least 5 pages.

If possible, find pages with different kinds of content. Also, for consistency, pick the same number paragraph on each page; for instance, pick the second paragraph on every page.

Tip: You may want to print out your samples, so you can look at their text on paper as you work onscreen.

8. Apply the HOT Evaluation to the text samples you have collected, filling out the evaluation form.

If a strategy or tactic seems irrelevant, omit it from your evaluation.  Note that this will change the total possible points.

Guidelines on trimming text

1a. Cut any paper-based text by 50%.

1b. Use short words.

1c. Make some sentences short.

1d. Make most paragraphs short.

1e. Delete marketing fluff.

1f. Move vital but tangential or supplemental material.

1g. Convert repeating categories of information into tables.

1h. Beware of cutting so far that you make the text ambiguous.

Examples of evaluations

Metropolitan Museum of Art (Patrick McAuliff)

Microsoft (Pat Kusch)

 

 

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