What stops people getting your message?

Whether you're writing on the web or for hard copy productions like brochures, marketing flyers or even business cards it's not only the words that count.

If you're working with a designer they will have lots of lovely creative ideas that help to attract people to your site/brochure/sales letter. This is great, a nice clean and attractive design makes a big difference to the reader's perception of you and your professionalism. The stumbling blocks start to occur when the design begins to have an impact on the copy.

There are a number of things that actually make perfectly good copy harder to read.

1. A dark background with lighter writing - this creates a dazzle effect and makes your reader have to work really hard to actually see the words. Stick to backgrounds that are lighter than your text.
2. Nice neat and tidy blocked paragraphs - they look tidy, but they 'help' the reader to lose their place. In narrower columns they also s t r e t c h words out and make big gaps in the text which looks silly. Left align your main copy and leave the right end 'ragged'.
3. All capitals - on the web this is considered to be shouting. If you want to emphasise a word bold is better than capitals.
4. Speaking of capitals - don't fall into the trap of putting a capital letter for every word in your headline (or subheaders). This simply interrupts the flow of the eye along the text - take a look at a newspaper, they've had years of experience in what people read and they don't put capitals for any words that aren't proper names.

Get this right and you're on track for messages that people actually get.

Here I am again - after almost a year - and I have to admit to shame at being a professional writer who hasn't blogged much at all! That is all about to change so watch this space.

I'm still on the same mission; to help people to get their message across in the words that work AND by presenting the words in a ways that makes it easy for people to read.

I get on my soapbox about tiny fonts on the web that make it hard for people to read and then I came across someone who had gone to the other extreme and was using a large and script-style font. It was nearly as bad as reading the very small text, a bit like reading a very long headline, and I found it really tiring.

The more of the tale is - nothing smaller than 10point, but nothing bigger than 12 point for main body copy. Now headlines are different - and should be at least 18 point to ensure that they are the first thing that people see when they arrive on your page.