Electronic documents should be... short,  top-heavy,  scannable,  navigable, and  straightforward.

Better-written technical documents enable people to work with greater speed, accuracy, and comfort. These qualities are measured by the usability factor. Sun Microsystems researchers applied several simple writing strategies to test web pages, improving the usability of a tourism web site by 127%, and a technical web site by 149%.  (See "Web Usability Studies").

Note:  These strategies are designed to improve informational web pages, but some non-technical web sites also have value.  The Internet has room for writing that creates suspense, style, and poetry.
 
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