Web Text Editing Exercise:
Editing for concise and objective Web text
The following text ( from a Government of Canada page entitled, “Youth Fairs,” whose intent is to encourage youth to attend government-held and other organization-sponsored career fairs. However, it obstructs the rhetorical aims of the Web site by being promotional and lacking conciseness and clarity. This text also has no photographs with it.
Youth Info Fairs are a very popular component of Canada’s Youth Employment Strategy. They offer an exciting showcase of career options, labour market information, youth programs and services and learning opportunities designed to help you explore your career options. Youth Info Fairs help you take on your future by:
trying out Internet web sites and local resources of help in finding rewarding careers,
learning and practicing job search skills at workshops and seminars,
finding career related information at exhibits.
Want to know where and when the next Info Fair will take place? Interested in knowing when other organisations are going to hold their fairs? Check out the Youth Employment Information (youth.gc.ca) Calendar of Events for upcomingYouth Info Fairs.
Editing Instructions
Step 1: Read the text carefully to ensure you understand the rhetorical aims of the Web page.
Step 2: Think about the audience—high school students who are thinking about their futures.
Step 3: Highlight words/phrases that strike you as too promotional, unnecessary, and ambiguous for this particular audience.
Step 4: Write down the problems with the text as if you had to explain them to a client who couldn’t understand what’s wrong with it. Note: this step is good practice for real-life situations!
Step 5: Rewrite the text with the aims of shortening it and giving it more clarity.
Remember! There are likely to be several good solutions
for this text other than our rewrite.
OUR SAMPLE REWRITE
We read the text (Step 1) and thought carefully about the target audience (Step 2).
Step 3: Text with our highlighted phrases (in bold)
Youth Info Fairs are a very popular component of Canada’s Youth Employment Strategy. They offer an exciting showcase of career options, labour market information, youth programs and services and learning opportunities designed to help you explore your career options. Youth Info Fairs help you take on your future by:
trying out Internet web sites and local resources of help in finding rewarding careers,
learning and practicing job search skills at workshops and seminars,
finding career related information at exhibits.
Want to know where and when the next Info Fair will take place? Interested in knowing when other organisations are going to hold their fairs? Check out the Youth Employment Information (youth.gc.ca)Calendar of Events for upcomingYouth Info Fairs.
Step 4: Our notes on problems with the text
Paragraph 1: Too long, hard to read, too much information all at once. Too promotional of the Youth Employment Strategy. This is addressed to an intended audience member, but the “you” is too far down in the paragraph. Language a little hyped, i.e., “exciting showcase.”
Bullets: First bullet mixes up two different items of information. Use of gerunds (verbs with ingendings) less effective than use of present tense.
Final paragraph: Too long. First mention of “other organizations”—what does this mean? Ambiguous. Again, promoting a government program and Web site. Use of questions are good, but use them in the first paragraph to engage interest, not at the bottom which is only leading user to click on the calendar.
Recommendation: Give this page a different look-and-feel by adding photos of smiling students at a youth fair to demonstrate fairs’ popularity.
Step 5: Our rewrite
Are you looking for a job? Do you want to explore your career options? Our popular Youth Info Fairs can help you:
- Find local job search resources.
- Practice your job hunting skills in workshops and seminars.
- Discover career opportunities for your future.
- Surf Web sites for good job information.
Go to The Calendar of Events for Youth Info Fair dates and locations.
NatCon: January 21-23, 2002How to Write and Evaluate Good Web Sites
Irene Hammerich and Claire Harrison