What writers and others say
“Be direct. Studies have shown that simple, direct language works better on screen than flowery or ‘marketing oriented’ prose.”
― Dan Bricklin, software developer
“Online, people seek (and expect) information rather than feel-good fuzziness.”
— Amy Gahran, media consultant and author of Contentious.com
“Cut the marketing fluff — your customers aren’t buying it.”
― Jordan Garner, global head, member account management, WeWork
“Visitors overwhelmingly prefer detail. But they don’t want to be overwhelmed by it.”
— Kate Meyer, user experience specialist, Nielsen Norman Group
“Users rarely look at logos, mission statements, slogans, or any other elements they consider fluff.”
― Jakob Nielsen, “king of usability”
“Promotional language imposes a cognitive burden on users who have to spend resources on filtering out the hyperbole to get at the facts. When people read a paragraph that starts ‘Nebraska is filled with internationally recognized attractions,’ their first reaction is ‘no, it’s not,’ and this thought slows them down and distracts them from using the site.”
— Jakob Nielsen, “king of usability”
“Kill the welcome mat and cut to the chase. People read very little on web pages. Don’t waste word count on generic, feel-good material.”
― Jakob Nielsen, “king of usability”
“The more florid the descriptions, the more users tune them out and go elsewhere. Sadly, the web is so smothered in vaporous content and intangible verbiage that users simply skip over it. The more bad writing you push on your users, the more you train them to disregard your message. Useless content doesn’t just annoy people; it’s a leading cause of lost sales.”
— Jakob Nielsen and Hoa Loranger, co-authors of Prioritizing Web Usability
“Using fluffy language doesn’t just hurt you while users are on your site. It can prevent users from finding your site in the first place because sites that use plain language will outrank you in the search engine results page listings.”
— Jakob Nielsen and Hoa Loranger. co-authors of Prioritizing Web Usability
“Fluff drags the writing. It’s clutter. Every unnecessary word makes a sentence harder to understand.”
― Stephanie Orges, writer, Balcom Agency
“Cut the fluff doesn’t mean dump the details.”
— Ann Wylie, writing coach, Wylie Communications
“Make sure you’re cutting the fat without tossing out the foie gras.”
— Ann Wylie, writing coach, Wylie Communications
“Remember what Texans say about people who are ‘all hat, no cattle.’ Too many corporate web pages are just that — puffy, overblown chest pounding with little solid evidence to back up the claims.”
— Ann Wylie, writing coach, Wylie Communications
How can you increase reading on smartphones?
It’s 48% harder to understand information on a smartphone than on a laptop. So how do you make your writing style easy to understand — even on the small screen?
Learn how to write readable web pages that don't overwhelm mobile readers at Reach Readers Online — our web-writing workshop.
You’ll learn proven-in-the-lab best practices for increasing web page usability up to 124% … how to pass a simple test for writing paragraphs visitors can read on mobile … and how to avoid making visitors “visibly angry” at verbose sites that waste their time.
