Working with Web Page Text and Tables

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When you create Web pages, you enter information the same way you enter information in other Word documents. The main concerns to address when creating Web text are to keep formatting simple, to ensure that text is concise, and to provide guidance for aligning components.

Adding Text and Headings

When you add text and headings to your Web pages, you should try to use Word's default styles, available in the Normal template. That way, if you later apply a theme to your Web page, the formatting will be applied directly to your document without extra formatting efforts on your part. Keep in mind that Web text is different from hard copy text. Generally, people read online text 25 percent more slowly than they read printed text. You can improve your Web pages' readability by keeping information concise and easy to scan. The following general rules of thumb might prove helpful when you create a Web page:

• Introduce a single idea per paragraph.

• Use simple sentence structure, and keep sentences short without oversimplifying your content.

• Limit paragraphs to 75 words or fewer.

• Use bulleted lists whenever possible.

• Use numbered lists when you're presenting a series of steps.

• Insert headings and subheadings to break up text and highlight key points.

• Keep headings simple and direct. (When in doubt, choose meaningful headings over clever ones.)

• Make sure that your information is presented in a logical hierarchy.

• Separate paragraphs with empty space (commonly referred to as white space).

• Avoid adding too many hyperlinks to your page's body text.

• Carefully check your spelling and grammar.

• Avoid tiny print, busy backgrounds, hard-to-see colors, and the like.

You want to make your main ideas jump out at readers. If your main ideas strike a chord with a reader, the reader will then move on to read the more detailed information. In addition to these text rules, remember that although theoretically Web pages are infinitely wide and infinitely long, you don't have to create ultra-long and ultra-wide documents. In most cases, a long Web page is usually easier to digest if it's divided into a number of shorter pages that are linked by means of hyperlinks on a menu bar.

Tip 

Avoid underlining text that is not a link  When you create Web text, avoid using underlining. Many people have become accustomed to associating underlined text in online documents with hyperlinks. If you underline text that isn't hyperlinked, viewers might become annoyed by clicking text and finding that it doesn't link to anything.

Inside Out: Using an animated GIF to create animated text for the Web

When you create Web text in Word, be aware that the animate text formatting feature found in the Text Effects tab in the Font dialog box doesn't work online (even though it seems like a natural fit). If you want to include animated text, consider creating an animated GIF. A number of free animated GIF builders and prebuilt animated GIFs are available for download on the Internet.

Using Tables to Align Web Page Elements

Many browsers (old and new) support tables without a hitch. Therefore, hordes of Web designers have gravitated toward using tables to help align information on Web pages. When you design Web pages, you'll frequently find that using a table simplifies your task. Fortunately, creating tables in Web pages is the same as creating tables in standard Word documents. You can format cells, borders, backgrounds, and so forth in the same manner. The main "trick" to using tables effectively in Web pages is to ensure that at least one cell is formatted to be a relative size (meaning that after the other table cells are displayed in a user's browser according to the table size settings, the relative table cell resizes to fit the remainder of the user's browser window). When you use tables in this manner, your Web page will resize to fit a browser's window.

Cross-Reference 

For more information about creating and using tables, see Chapter 13, "Organizing Concepts in Tables."

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