Designing Effective Online Help

Writing short sentences

Sentence length impacts a reader's ability to comprehend its meaning. Users don't care how well you can link five sentences together. They're not looking for poetry. They want information presented in a format they feel comfortable with. That usually means shorter sentences that deliver only pertinent information.

There are two ways to reduce sentence length. First, you should use active voice. For example, you should write "John hit Bob," not "Bob was hit by John." Second, you should use declarative and imperative sentences. This is especially important when you're writing instructions, for example "Click the X button."