Ginny Redish -- Letting Go of the Words (Podcast Interview at STC Summit)
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Length: 8 min.
Ginny Redish has just written a new book, Letting Go of the Words: Writing Web Content that Works. I had a chance to meet up with Ginny at the STC Summit and interviewed her briefly about her new book. Redish told me, "Every use of your website is a conversation started by the site visitor." Here's an extended description:
People come to web sites for the content -- for the information that answers their questions and lets them complete their tasks. In Letting Go of the Words, Ginny Redish provides easy-to-read guidelines with many full-color examples to help you plan, organize, write, and revise web content so that it is easy to find and easy to use.
You can buy the book here. It really is in full color with a lot of attractive diagrams and illustrations.
I haven't read it yet, but the writing-as-conversation metaphor is appealing. The basic idea, I believe, is to anticipate the reader's questions and then construct your writing as a response. This type of writing focuses you on your audience and gets you thinking about the specific questions, concerns, issues, and other problems your users might have. Each sentence you write should somehow answers those questions -- you construct the conversation. Sounds like a brilliant technique, though I've never fully implemented it.
More Resources about Ginny Redish and Letting Go of the Words
- Other interviews about Letting Go of the Words
- Ginny's blog listing articles related to the book
- Ginny Redish's website
About Tom Johnson
I'm a technical writer / API doc specialist based in the Seattle area. In this blog, I write about topics related to technical writing and communication — such as software documentation, API documentation, visual communication, information architecture, writing techniques, plain language, tech comm careers, and more. Check out my API documentation if you're looking for more info about that. If you're a technical writer and want to keep on top of the latest trends in the field, be sure to subscribe to email updates below. You can also learn more about me or contact me. Finally, note that the opinions I express on my blog are my own points of view, not that of my employer.