Omit needless words! Book Club: Don't Make me Think - Chapter 5

Andrew Nolan

2023-03-26

Omit needless words.

Krug's Third law of usability: "Get rid of half the words on each page, and then get rid of half of what's left."

This may seem impossible, and it probably is. But the point is to emphasize the importance of simplifying your page.

This comes from E.B. White's Elements of Style when he says Omit needless words.

People are coming to your site to complete a goal. They do not want to read any additional flavor text or fluff. Think about the last time you read a recipe online, it probably started with a lot of background text that you skipped and went straight to the recipe. Think of your website like that, cut out all the unnecessary stuff so users can get where they are going faster.

Doing this will provide a few key benefits for your site. Reducing words reduces noise. It makes actual useful content more prominent. And it makes the pages shorter, thus easier to scan without scrolling.

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