World Wide Web Style

Web Reading Habits
Writing for the Web
Capitalization of Electronic World Names
Copyright on the Web
URLs and E-mail Addresses

Web Reading Habits Keep in mind the ways in which web documents differ from printed ones, especially if you are hoping to appeal to an external audience (including prospective students, their parents, and advisors).

• When people read copy on a computer screen, especially if they are browsing the Web, they tend to skim rather than read more carefully, line-for-line and word-for-word, as they might if reading a printed piece.

• Readers tend to skip from one web page to another, from one link to another, rather than reading a page from top to bottom.

• Visitors to your site should know exactly whose site it is and what its purpose is when they view your home page.

• Outline, organize, subordinate: Use links to take readers into deeper levels of a topic. Think of upper-level pages as summaries or abstracts to whet the reader's appetite. Then use your links as a map of where they can go from there.

• Use subheads when your copy runs more than one screen in length, or break copy into more pages.

• Write short paragraphs and sentences (avoid complex sentence structures and jargon where possible).

• Speak directly to the reader, where appropriate (the Web is perceived as more personal and informal than a book or printed magazine).

• Spell out abbreviations and acronyms the first time you use them on each page even if you've spelled them out on the home page; think of each page as self-contained. Does it make sense if this is the one and only page on your site that someone reads?

• Use boldfaced subheads, illustrations, lists, and other (quick-loading) visual elements to help communicate your main points.

Capitalization of Electronic World Names

E-world lexicon continues to change as rapidly as a Pentium processor can save your Word file. For those of us in the editorial world, this fluidity of terms and the styling of those terms present a constant headache.

According to Constance Hale, Wired magazine's resident style maven, "cap rules aren't that hard to grasp. . . . If a noun is merely the generic name for a thing (network), spell it all lowercase. Only when a noun describes a specific thing with its own identity (Usenet) is it a proper noun, and initial-capped." (Wired Style: Picking Nits page. December 1999.)

Until we have an Intergalactic Wide Web, the Web with which most folks are familiar is the World Wide Web, which makes "the Web" an abbreviation of World Wide Web; hence the initial capital when we're talking about the noun, the Web. However, when used as an adjective, lowercase it.

web page

web site

home page

The School of Law home page and the Law Alumni page are the two most frequently used.

Since its inception in 1989, the Web has spawned a revolution in communications, commerce, and worldwide research capabilities.

Just because something appears on the Web doesn't necessarily mean that it's part of the public domain. Assume, therefore, that anything and everything is copyrighted by someone. Since 1989, published material — printed matter or web-based, including photographs — is considered copyrighted whether it has a copyright notice or not. A copyright is, simply put, the legal right of authors, photographers, etc., to control the use of their own creative works.

For more information on the state of electronic copyright issues, see the CU-Boulder Web Publishing Policy.

URLs and E-mail Addresses

Although some confusion is possible when a URL ends a sentence and the writer adds the necessary period, most people who use the Web will not be confused by this because web addresses are not allowed to end with a period or comma. Do not add punctuation to an e-mail or Internet address. If a web address won't fit on one line, we recommend breaking the address after a forward slash or before a period. Do not hyphenate it unless there is a long word (like colorado.edu) that might naturally break with a hyphen.

You can get answers to many of your campus questions at www.colorado.edu/
ralphie.

You can search for available courses in your field of study at www.colo-
rado.edu.

You can begin your exploration of CU-Boulder at the university’s home page at www
.colorado.edu.

Follow these guidelines for presenting URLs:

• It usually is not necessary to use boldface or italic type for URLs (although these are acceptable options). Treat them as you would phone numbers.

• If the URL seems awkwardly stuck in the middle of a sentence, try rewriting the sentence to allow for placement at the end.

• Leave off the http:// at the beginning of URLs and forward slashes at the end. Most browsers automatically insert these for you. An exception may be a URL that starts with something other than www. Use your judgement on whether your audience will understand the absence of www.

You can get more information about Publications and Creative Services from our home page at www.colorado.edu/Publications.

You can read more about the CU-Boulder Leeds School of Business at leeds.colorado.edu.