Lede or lead?

You won’t find it in the Oxford English Dictionary. But the alternative spelling lede was supposedly created during the linotype era so as not to confuse lead with the strip of metal that was used to separate lines of type.

The word lede still looks weird to me. But even if you prefer the spelling lede, remember: Leads lead the reader into the body of your piece.

So what types of web content leads should you try?

4 types of web leads to try

Web content’s not a newspaper story. So instead of news leads, try these four types of web leads:

1. Snappy synthesis

Don’t bury the lead under all of the W’s and H’s. Instead, steal a trick from The New York Times, and try snappy synthesis. Synthesize your subject matter into a short, snappy sentence like this:

2. Stakeholder benefits

Don’t write about us and our stuff. Instead, draw readers in by focusing on how they can use, or benefit from, our products, services, programs and ideas. Here’s how that looks:

3. Data point

Can you illustrate the gist of the story with a startling statistic? If so, try a lead like this, from Visa’s Reading Is Fundamental program, for your web content:

4. Illustration

Show, don’t tell. Illustrate your essential point with an example like this, from an H&R Block survey of kids about taxes:

3 types of web leads to avoid

Don’t treat your web content as a news story … but don’t bury the lede, either. Here are three types of leads to avoid:

1. Abstraction

To draw readers into your web content, write web leads that are concrete, creative and provocative. That means dry, boring, abstract leads like this aren’t a good choice:

2. Background

The background section — aka the blah blah — belongs in the third paragraph. So keep definitions, history lessons and other broader context like this out of the opening paragraph:

3. Welcome text

According to the Nielsen Norman Group, nonessential introductions like this one cause readers to skip your lead:

Ledes should lead

Whichever lead approach you choose for your web content, make sure it’s concrete, creative and provocative. Make sure your lede leads readers into the story — instead of leading them astray.

Regardless of how you choose to spell it.

Learn more

• Learn more about lede (or lead) writing.
• Find out how to organize your message.
• Perfect the paragraph that comes after the lead: the nut graph.

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Reading on the screen is hard for a simple reason: Our eyes weren’t made to stare at little beige boxes all day.

When reading online, your readers face these special problems:

• Light. Reading online is like reading with a flashlight shining in your eyes. And you know what happens when you spend your day staring at a lightbulb.
• Blinking. People blink less often when reading online than when reading print. That’s a problem, because blinking is what keeps our eyes moist and relaxed. They also open their eyes wider when reading on the screen. That makes their tears evaporate faster and leads to dry eye.
• Scrolling. The human eye has a normal reflex called optokinetic nystagmus. That’s scientist talk for the way our eyes flit across the screen to follow scrolling type. That constant jumping up and down can wear your readers out, cause eyestrain and cause readers to feel a little seasick. (So you can cause readers to throw up from what you write online.)

The result?

Some 12 million Americans visit eye doctors each year because of computer-related problems, according to the American Optometric Association. That’s one out of every five people who come in for an eye exam.

Among the issues:

Computer vision syndrome

Some 50% to 90% of computer users suffer from eye strain, according to WebMD. No wonder computer vision syndrome is recognized by the American Optometric Association. It includes these symptoms:

• Sore or irritated eyes
• Trouble focusing
• Dry or watery eyes
• Blurred or double vision
• Sensitivity to light
• Shortsightedness

Eye strain

People who spend hours staring at a screen suffer chemical changes in their tears similar to folks with dry eye, according to a 2014 Japanese Dry Eye Society study. Symptoms include irritation, burning and blurred vision.

Screen-sightedness

Reading a blog post on an iPhone is like reading War and Peace through a keyhole — with a flashlight shining in your eyes.

No wonder, then, that screen reading causes — in addition to such symptoms as eyestrain and nausea — advancing myopia, aka shortsightedness.

Blame it on smartphones, says British eye surgeon David Allamby of Focus Clinics. He calls this epidemic “screen-sightedness.”

In fact, since smartphones were introduced in the 1990s, the number of people with this condition has increased by 35%, according to Allamby. By 2033, he predicts, half of all 30-year-olds will suffer from screen-sightedness.

A welcome site

Bottom line?

“I’ve had people come to our clinic saying they were going to quit their jobs because they couldn’t take it,” David Grisham, optometry professor at the University of California, told the San Francisco Chronicle.

Not exactly the purpose of your intranet, is it?

Don’t make your reader turn a blind eye to your message. When you write web content, get to the point faster, organize better, make it easier to read and more skimmable.

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