University of New Hampshire, Department of Computer Science

Information Technology 502
, Intermediate Web Design

Spring 2024

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Design Template by Anonymous

Audiences and Accessibility

Web Writing for different audiences

Many different types of websites are useful for different reasons. You may be going to a cooking website to find a recipe for rice pudding, a website for a product you saw an advertisement for, a website to learn tips and tricks for Microsoft Excel, or any other number of websites.
All of these websites have different writing styles that conform with what message they are trying to convey and with who is writing them. Lastly, these writing styles are often combined for more powerful, meaningful, or helpful content.

Narrative/Descriptive writing

When we go to websites for cooking recipes, nowadays, we expect to find a “blog” of sorts before the recipe. Many authors of these sites use narrative and/or descriptive writing to tell you a story about their recipe. For some authors, this blog could be how they make their money, or could simply be a project for them to share their recipes with the world.
Often, this section is to convince a reader that their recipe is the best, and you should make their recipe over somebody else’s. This section also often includes important information like substitutions you could make in the recipe, or in-depth instructions on a specific technique.

Persuasive writing

For a product’s website, we are usually reading persuasive writing. This is writing that tries to get the reader to agree with them, and in this case, buy their product. This can be an effective way to sell a product, tell the reader about your business, or convince a reader to use your service. This writing is mainly based on the author’s opinions.

Expository writing

Lastly, many searches online lead to websites with expository writing. This is a usually unbiased writing style to give the reader information about something specific. This is the kind of writing we read when we look up “how to do something”, when we are looking for the answer to a question, or looking for facts about something. The author does not give their opinion on the information given.

Web writing for accessibility

There are some small ways that make a big difference for accessibility on the web. Most accessibility issues come with the way that the page is formatted, not necessarily the content, but there are common mistakes that can prevent the content from being accessible for someone using a screen reader or with impaired vision.