Tips on Writing for the Web Environment

List documents mentioning Tips on Writing for the Web

Writing for the web demands pithy sentences, skillful hyperlinks, point-first writing, clear division into sections, use of headings, lists and tables, images, and awareness of how punctuation looks on a screen.

¶Pithy Sentences

Keep your writing taut and to the point. Some variation in syntax keeps your prose lively, but subject-verb-object syntax should predominate. Avoid baroque sentences with inverted syntax and subordinate clauses.

¶Point-First Writing

Point-first writing is particularly important in the web environment. Make sure each paragraph begins with a point sentence (sometimes called a topic sentence or mini-claim). Readers often skim in the web environment. Make sure the first sentence in each paragraph summarizes the contents of the paragraph.

¶Section Divisions and Headings

Web readers are accustomed to viewing shorter sections of text than are typically found in printed texts. Such an arrangement makes it easier for readers to scan the page quickly for the information that is of interest to them.

Divide your article into a number of discrete sections and use a short, descriptive heading for each section. Note that MoEML recommends particular headings for Encyclopedia pages. These headings will generate the Contents List that appears on the left-hand side of a MoEML page. We can encode up to five levels of sub-headings.

Paragraph lengths are typically shorter in the web environment than in print.

¶Use Hyperlinks

The electronic medium means that you have the opportunity to support your writing with any number of hypertext links. There is no need to interrupt the flow of your writing with discursive or parenthetical asides. You may make links to pages/projects outside the MoEML environment, to other pages within MoEML, to a particular section on a MoEML page, to the Agas map (with your custom drawing on the map, if you wish), and to other sections within your own contribution.

Provide a logical piece of text for your readers to click on to get to that other page, project, or section. (Another way of thinking about this issue: the MoEML encoders need to wrap the hyperlink around a string of text.) Click here for [something] is clunky but clear. If you can, just integrate into your own prose a logical term or phrase that will bear the hyperlink.

Although MoEML will normally encode your article for you, you need to tell us where to create hyperlinks and where they should point. See Preparing your Contribution for Encoding for more details.

¶Lists and Tables

Bulleted or numbered lists work well in the web environment. We can encode either type of list very easily, as well as lists within lists.

Tables with 3-4 columns also work well in the MoEML environment. If you want your table to have sortable columns, tell us how you want them to sort (alphabetically or numerically).

¶Images

We highly recommend the use of images in your contribution. Images illustrate your point(s) and also break up long blocks of text. See our Contributor Guidelines on the use of images.

¶Punctuation

Avoid using semi-colons (unless they appear in a quotation), because they look like commas on many screens.

Cite this page

MLA citation

Jenstad, Janelle, Kim McLean-Fiander, and Katie Tanigawa. Tips on Writing for the Web. The Map of Early Modern London, Edition 7.0, edited by Janelle Jenstad, U of Victoria, 05 May 2022, mapoflondon.uvic.ca/edition/7.0/web_writing_tips.htm.

Chicago citation

Jenstad, Janelle, Kim McLean-Fiander, and Katie Tanigawa. Tips on Writing for the Web. The Map of Early Modern London, Edition 7.0. Ed. Janelle Jenstad. Victoria: University of Victoria. Accessed May 05, 2022. mapoflondon.uvic.ca/edition/7.0/web_writing_tips.htm.

APA citation

Jenstad, J., McLean-Fiander, K., & Tanigawa, K. 2022. Tips on Writing for the Web. In J. Jenstad (Ed), The Map of Early Modern London (Edition 7.0). Victoria: University of Victoria. Retrieved from https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/editions/7.0/web_writing_tips.htm.

RIS file (for RefMan, RefWorks, EndNote etc.)

Provider: University of Victoria
Database: The Map of Early Modern London
Content: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

TY  - ELEC
A1  - Jenstad, Janelle
A1  - McLean-Fiander, Kim
A1  - Tanigawa, Katie
ED  - Jenstad, Janelle
T1  - Tips on Writing for the Web
T2  - The Map of Early Modern London
ET  - 7.0
PY  - 2022
DA  - 2022/05/05
CY  - Victoria
PB  - University of Victoria
LA  - English
UR  - https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/edition/7.0/web_writing_tips.htm
UR  - https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/edition/7.0/xml/standalone/web_writing_tips.xml
ER  -

TEI citation

<bibl type="mla"><author><name ref="#JENS1"><surname>Jenstad</surname>, <forename>Janelle</forename></name></author>, <author><name ref="#MCFI1"><forename>Kim</forename> <surname>McLean-Fiander</surname></name></author>, and <author><name ref="#TANI1"><forename>Katie</forename> <surname>Tanigawa</surname></name></author>. <title level="a">Tips on Writing for the Web</title>. <title level="m">The Map of Early Modern London</title>, Edition <edition>7.0</edition>, edited by <editor><name ref="#JENS1"><forename>Janelle</forename> <surname>Jenstad</surname></name></editor>, <publisher>U of Victoria</publisher>, <date when="2022-05-05">05 May 2022</date>, <ref target="https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/edition/7.0/web_writing_tips.htm">mapoflondon.uvic.ca/edition/7.0/web_writing_tips.htm</ref>.</bibl>

Personography

Joey Takeda

JT

Programmer, 2018-present. Junior Programmer, 2015-2017. Research Assistant, 2014-2017. Joey Takeda was a graduate student at the University of British Columbia in the Department of English (Science and Technology research stream). He completed his BA honours in English (with a minor in Women’s Studies) at the University of Victoria in 2016. His primary research interests included diasporic and indigenous Canadian and American literature, critical theory, cultural studies, and the digital humanities.
Roles played in the project
- Abstract Author
- Author
- CSS Editor
- Compiler
- Conceptor
- Copy Editor
- Editor
- Encoder
- Geo-Coordinate Researcher
- Junior Programmer
- Markup Editor
- Post-Conversion Editor
- Programmer
- Proofreader
- Researcher
- Toponymist
- Transcriber
- Transcription Proofreader
Contributions by this author
Joey Takeda is a member of the following organizations and/or groups:
Joey Takeda is mentioned in the following documents:
Joey Takeda authored or edited the following items in MoEML’s bibliography:
- Jenstad, Janelle and Joseph Takeda. Making the RA Matter: Pedagogy, Interface, and Practices. Making Things and Drawing Boundaries: Experiments in the Digital Humanities. Ed. Jentery Sayers. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2018. Print.
Katie Tanigawa

KT

Project Manager, 2015-2019. Katie Tanigawa was a doctoral candidate at the University of Victoria. Her dissertation focused on representations of poverty in Irish modernist literature. Her additional research interests included geospatial analyses of modernist texts and digital humanities approaches to teaching and analyzing literature.
Roles played in the project
- Author
- Conceptor
- Encoder
- Geo-Coordinate Researcher
- Managing Editor
- Markup Editor
- Project Manager
- Proofreader
- Transcription Proofreader
Contributions by this author
Katie Tanigawa is a member of the following organizations and/or groups:
Katie Tanigawa is mentioned in the following documents:
Tye Landels-Gruenewald

TLG

Data Manager, 2015-2016. Research Assistant, 2013-2015. Tye completed his undergraduate honours degree in English at the University of Victoria in 2015.
Roles played in the project
- Author
- CSS Editor
- Compiler
- Conceptor
- Copy Editor
- Data Manager
- Editor
- Encoder
- Geo-Coordinate Researcher
- Markup Editor
- Metadata Architect
- Proofreader
- Researcher
- Toponymist
- Transcriber
- Transcription Proofreader
Contributions by this author
Tye Landels-Gruenewald is a member of the following organizations and/or groups:
Tye Landels-Gruenewald is mentioned in the following documents:
Kim McLean-Fiander

KMF

Director of Pedagogy and Outreach, 2015–2020. Associate Project Director, 2015. Assistant Project Director, 2013-2014. MoEML Research Fellow, 2013. Kim McLean-Fiander comes to The Map of Early Modern London from the Cultures of Knowledge digital humanities project at the University of Oxford, where she was the editor of Early Modern Letters Online, an open-access union catalogue and editorial interface for correspondence from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. She is currently Co-Director of a sister project to EMLO called Women’s Early Modern Letters Online (WEMLO). In the past, she held an internship with the curator of manuscripts at the Folger Shakespeare Library, completed a doctorate at Oxford on paratext and early modern women writers, and worked a number of years for the Bodleian Libraries and as a freelance editor. She has a passion for rare books and manuscripts as social and material artifacts, and is interested in the development of digital resources that will improve access to these materials while ensuring their ongoing preservation and conservation. An avid traveler, Kim has always loved both London and maps, and so is particularly delighted to be able to bring her early modern scholarly expertise to bear on the MoEML project.
Roles played in the project
- Associate Project Director
- Author
- CSS Editor
- Compiler
- Conceptor
- Copy Editor
- Data Manager
- Director of Pedagogy and Outreach
- Editor
- Encoder
- Geo-Coordinate Researcher
- Managing Editor
- Markup Editor
- Metadata Architect
- Research Fellow
- Toponymist
- Transcriber
- Transcription Proofreader
- Vetter
Contributions by this author
Kim McLean-Fiander is a member of the following organizations and/or groups:
Kim McLean-Fiander is mentioned in the following documents:
Janelle Jenstad

JJ

Janelle Jenstad is Associate Professor of English at the University of Victoria, Director of The Map of Early Modern London, and PI of Linked Early Modern Drama Online. She has taught at Queen’s University, the Summer Academy at the Stratford Festival, the University of Windsor, and the University of Victoria. With Jennifer Roberts-Smith and Mark Kaethler, she co-edited Shakespeare’s Language in Digital Media (Routledge). She has prepared a documentary edition of John Stow’s A Survey of London (1598 text) for MoEML and is currently editing The Merchant of Venice (with Stephen Wittek) and Heywood’s 2 If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody for DRE. Her articles have appeared in Digital Humanities Quarterly, Renaissance and Reformation,Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Early Modern Literary Studies, Elizabethan Theatre, Shakespeare Bulletin: A Journal of Performance Criticism, and The Silver Society Journal. Her book chapters have appeared (or will appear) in Institutional Culture in Early Modern Society (Brill, 2004), Shakespeare, Language and the Stage, The Fifth Wall: Approaches to Shakespeare from Criticism, Performance and Theatre Studies (Arden/Thomson Learning, 2005), Approaches to Teaching Othello (Modern Language Association, 2005), Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate, 2007), New Directions in the Geohumanities: Art, Text, and History at the Edge of Place (Routledge, 2011), Early Modern Studies and the Digital Turn (Iter, 2016), Teaching Early Modern English Literature from the Archives (MLA, 2015), Placing Names: Enriching and Integrating Gazetteers (Indiana, 2016), Making Things and Drawing Boundaries (Minnesota, 2017), and Rethinking Shakespeare’s Source Study: Audiences, Authors, and Digital Technologies (Routledge, 2018).
Roles played in the project
- Abstract Author
- Author
- Author (Preface)
- Author of Preface
- Compiler
- Conceptor
- Copy Editor
- Course Instructor
- Course Supervisor
- Data Manager
- Editor
- Encoder
- Geo-Coordinate Researcher
- Markup Editor
- Peer Reviewer
- Project Director
- Proofreader
- Researcher
- Toponymist
- Transcriber
- Transcription Proofreader
- Vetter
Contributions by this author
Janelle Jenstad is a member of the following organizations and/or groups:
Janelle Jenstad is mentioned in the following documents:
Janelle Jenstad authored or edited the following items in MoEML’s bibliography:
- Jenstad, Janelle and Joseph Takeda. Making the RA Matter: Pedagogy, Interface, and Practices. Making Things and Drawing Boundaries: Experiments in the Digital Humanities. Ed. Jentery Sayers. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2018. Print.
- Jenstad, Janelle. Building a Gazetteer for Early Modern London, 1550-1650. Placing Names. Ed. Merrick Lex Berman, Ruth Mostern, and Humphrey Southall. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 2016. 129-145.
- Jenstad, Janelle. The Burse and the Merchant’s Purse: Coin, Credit, and the Nation in Heywood’s 2 If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody. The Elizabethan Theatre XV. Ed. C.E. McGee and A.L. Magnusson. Toronto: P.D. Meany, 2002. 181–202. Print.
- Jenstad, Janelle. The City Cannot Hold You: Social Conversion in the Goldsmith’s Shop. Early Modern Literary Studies 8.2 (2002): 5.1–26..
- Jenstad, Janelle. The Gouldesmythes Storehowse: Early Evidence for Specialisation. The Silver Society Journal 10 (1998): 40–43.
- Jenstad, Janelle. Lying-in Like a Countess: The Lisle Letters, the Cecil Family, and A Chaste Maid in Cheapside. Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 34 (2004): 373–403. doi:10.1215/10829636–34–2–373.
- Jenstad, Janelle. Public Glory, Private Gilt: The Goldsmiths’ Company and the Spectacle of Punishment. Institutional Culture in Early Modern Society. Ed. Anne Goldgar and Robert Frost. Leiden: Brill, 2004. 191–217. Print.
- Jenstad, Janelle. Smock Secrets: Birth and Women’s Mysteries on the Early Modern Stage. Performing Maternity in Early Modern England. Ed. Katherine Moncrief and Kathryn McPherson. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007. 87–99. Print.
- Jenstad, Janelle. Using Early Modern Maps in Literary Studies: Views and Caveats from London. GeoHumanities: Art, History, Text at the Edge of Place. Ed. Michael Dear, James Ketchum, Sarah Luria, and Doug Richardson. London: Routledge, 2011. Print.
- Jenstad, Janelle. Versioning John Stow’s A Survey of London, or, What’s New in 1618 and 1633?. Janelle Jenstad Blog. https://janellejenstad.com/2013/03/20/versioning-john-stows-a-survey-of-london-or-whats-new-in-1618-and-1633/.
- Shakespeare, William. The Merchant of Venice. Ed. Janelle Jenstad. Internet Shakespeare Editions. U of Victoria. http://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/Texts/MV/.
- Stow, John. A SVRVAY OF LONDON. Contayning the Originall, Antiquity, Increase, Moderne estate, and description of that Citie, written in the yeare 1598. by Iohn Stow Citizen of London. Also an Apologie (or defence) against the opinion of some men, concerning that Citie, the greatnesse thereof. With an Appendix, containing in Latine, Libellum de situ & nobilitate Londini: written by William Fitzstephen, in the raigne of Henry the second. Ed. Janelle Jenstad and the MoEML Team. MoEML. Transcribed.
Martin D. Holmes

MDH

Programmer at the University of Victoria Humanities Computing and Media Centre (HCMC). Martin ported the MOL project from its original PHP incarnation to a pure eXist database implementation in the fall of 2011. Since then, he has been lead programmer on the project and has also been responsible for maintaining the project schemas. He was a co-applicant on MoEML’s 2012 SSHRC Insight Grant.
Roles played in the project
- Abstract Author
- Author
- Conceptor
- Editor
- Encoder
- Geo-Coordinate Researcher
- Markup Editor
- Post-Conversion Editor
- Programmer
- Proofreader
- Researcher
Contributions by this author
Martin D. Holmes is a member of the following organizations and/or groups:
Martin D. Holmes is mentioned in the following documents:

Tips on Writing for the Web Environment

¶Pithy Sentences

¶Point-First Writing

¶Section Divisions and Headings

¶Use Hyperlinks

¶Lists and Tables

¶Images

¶Punctuation

Cite this page

MLA citation

Chicago citation

APA citation

RIS file (for RefMan, RefWorks, EndNote etc.)

TEI citation

Personography

Joey Takeda

JT

Roles played in the project

Contributions by this author

Joey Takeda is a member of the following organizations and/or groups:

Joey Takeda is mentioned in the following documents:

Joey Takeda authored or edited the following items in MoEML’s bibliography:

Katie Tanigawa

KT

Roles played in the project

Contributions by this author

Katie Tanigawa is a member of the following organizations and/or groups:

Katie Tanigawa is mentioned in the following documents:

Tye Landels-Gruenewald

TLG

Roles played in the project

Contributions by this author

Tye Landels-Gruenewald is a member of the following organizations and/or groups:

Tye Landels-Gruenewald is mentioned in the following documents:

Kim McLean-Fiander

KMF

Roles played in the project

Contributions by this author

Kim McLean-Fiander is a member of the following organizations and/or groups:

Kim McLean-Fiander is mentioned in the following documents:

Janelle Jenstad

JJ

Roles played in the project

Contributions by this author

Janelle Jenstad is a member of the following organizations and/or groups:

Janelle Jenstad is mentioned in the following documents:

Janelle Jenstad authored or edited the following items in MoEML’s bibliography:

Martin D. Holmes

MDH

Roles played in the project

Contributions by this author

Martin D. Holmes is a member of the following organizations and/or groups:

Martin D. Holmes is mentioned in the following documents: