Content Organization

If you're starting a fresh page, begin by making an outline. Use it to structure the rest of the page. Put the most important content at the top, make the entire page easy to skim, and use headings to split the content into sections as needed. 

Make It Easy to Skim

Save the time of the reader. Yes, we're invoking S. R. Ranganathan's fourth law of library science! The library website is usually a stop on the way to accomplish a task, whether that's researching a topic or finding a lending laptop. Don't let bloated content get in their way.

Avoid building a wall of text. Break up and organize your content using headings, short paragraphs, and lists so that users can find the information they need quickly and easily.

Let that content organization do most of the emphasis for you. Avoid bolding or highlighting too many phrases on one page, as this creates visual clutter that users' eyes will skip over.

Use Headings

Good headings help the reader to find the information they need. Headings are visually apparent to sighted readers as larger or bolder text. They are also apparent to users using screen readers, since headings offer a way to navigate a page quickly (the aural equivalent of visually skimming).

How do you insert a header? The text editing window in Drupal includes a dropdown with the "Normal" setting selected by default. This dropdown offers three headings, Heading 2, Heading 3, and Heading 4. Use them in that order to create headings with nested sub-headings, where applicable.

Good headings are consistently phrased. Try to use title case for short phrases ("Useful Information") and sentence case for longer phrases or sentences ("How can I borrow this device?").

Example

Before

After

Further Reading

• "Including Useful Headings" (NC State access only), chapter 9 of Letting Go of the Words (2012) by Ginny Redish

Next: Make Good Links