Comments on: Book Recommendation: Letting Go of the Words

By: Sticking it to Instruction | In the Library with the Lead Pipe

Sticking it to Instruction | In the Library with the Lead Pipe — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 10:38:54 +0000

[...] Book Recommendation: Letting Go of the Words – a book on designing for web content, useful for our websites, but also for presentations [...]

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 13:23:54 +0000

One place where the choice of words can in fact be irrelevant to UI design is labels. People only read labels when they are unsure what it is they are labelling. In most cases, if you have done a decent IA job, the content that’s labelled will describe itself. There is not point in having a list of product names and prices with the words “Products & Prices” over the top. I guarantee that if you changed that to “Monkeys & Flowers” nobody would given a damn, even assuming they even noticed.

Of course, if the content is not self-descriptive, then labels can help. If you have a table of pictures of monkeys next to a column of flowers, then you’re going to need a good label or two.

I’m often surprised how often people don’t seem to grasp this fact.

By: Jeff Bridgforth

Jeff Bridgforth — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 13:38:06 +0000

Josh, Thanks for the recommendation. I am curious how this book differs from what Gerry McGovern writes and talks about. I have heard from Gerry at 2 different UIE conferences. He talks about writing from the Web. I am curious to get your take on how Ginny’s book differs.

By: Andy

Andy — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 23:25:57 +0000

Another reason words are important: Search Engines.

Some will argue more words are better for Search Engines, but Google calls themselves a ‘User Experience” company, so I hope they learn to reward the happy medium of concise, descriptive content, and penalize pages that use too much, or too little words.

By: Arjan`s World » LINKBLOG for October 11, 2008

Arjan`s World » LINKBLOG for October 11, 2008 — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 19:29:31 +0000

[...] Book Recommendation: Letting Go of the Words – Joshua Porter ‘ If there is one book you should read next, itâ€™s “Letting Go of the Words” by Ginny Redish ‘ [...]

By: Robert

Robert — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 17:50:43 +0000

I think that the core conclusion you extracted from the book would gain increased credibility by adding a "transactional" modifier:

Most transactional uses of the web are for gathering information or doing tasks, not for the pleasure of reading.

IMHO, there's a quadriga of web use cases: education, entertainment, transaction, and social bonding. And some of them strong fulfill a pleasure of reading (or watching, to generalize even more).