Becky, sounds like some of your frustration is in addressing the gap between the architecture of experiences and the content contained in those experiences. The latter is typically the purview of content developers, but usually under the guidance and direction of content strategists. While content strategy often addresses issues of category nomenclature and site-wide parity and consistency--all key to helping users sniff out information--it can also prescribe page-level consistency and cohesion.
I've found Joseph Williams' "Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace" (sixth edition if you can find it) to be an excellent guide to writing for information scent. Specifically, he addresses consistency and cohesion within sentences, paragraphs, sections of pages, and across site categories. In a way, good structure is very fractalized, with the largest chucks (categories) mimicking the internal structure of the smallest elements (sentences) if they are organized well. Good organization was one of the big things I learned from his chapter on cohesion and coherence. Cohesion addresses the sense of flow: start sentences/paragraphs with known or familiar information, and let that lead into new information. Let one element flow to the next, judiciously incorporating repetition, passive voice, and parallelism to lead the reader from old to new. Ensure that structure stays on course. That's where coherence comes in. Coherence addresses the sense of focus. Sentences can hang together well, but lose their way by the end of a paragraph. Paragraphs that hew closely to a single topic--such as this does, to organization--can maintain both cohesion and coherence. Hope this and that Williams book help. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=43708 ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [email protected] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
