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Subject:Ideal web page length/Standard English From:geoff-h -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA Date:Sat, 8 Nov 1997 20:51:07 -0600
Apologies if you get this twice; the techwr-l server told
me these two bounced:
Nea Dodson wondered if there were any guidelines for ideal
web page lengths. Nope. It depends entirely on what you're
trying to accomplish and what your users are looking for.
There _is_ a tradeoff between "short page = fast download
but frequent downloads to get the whole text" and "long
page = long dowload but fewer downloads to get the whole
text", but again, the "sweet spot" will depend on your
audience.
Elyse Anchell wondered <<is there an "accepted" standard
for which English you write in if you are only going to
produce one English version of an international software
application?>>
Elyse, based on my four years on the copyediting-l list,
it's become painfully obvious to me that there isn't even a
_national_ standard for English, let alone an international
one. U.S. English is the de facto international standard
simply because of the dominance of American culture. There
may be an ISO standard somewhere too, but I doubt it's
useful simply because no nation follows that standard
(i.e., Canadian style differs from British, American,
Australian, New Zealand, etc. style, so no ISO guide will
overcome these differences).
There's a host of information on simplified or controlled-
vocabulary English available via STC, and there are also
obvious rules of thumb (avoid metaphors based on your own
culture: e.g., cricket vs. baseball, football vs. soccer)
that help, but the best solution by far is to create one
optimized version for your local market, then get a skilled
local editor for each market to read it over, looking for
any gotchas. With this approach, you might be able to find
revise your original to produce a single printed document
that offends nobody, but this is a compromise, not the
optimal solution.
--Geoff Hart @8^) geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
Disclaimer: Speaking for myself, not FERIC.
