Passive voice for Web 2.0 writing
Passive voice is well suited for Web 2.0 writing, argues Jakob Nielsen . The first two words of a headline or lede will decide the reader's attention, and passive voice lets you put the right objects at the start.
recent findings from our eyetracking research emphasized the overwhelming importance of getting the first 2 words right, since that's often all users see when they scan Web pages. Given this, we have to bend the writing guidelines a bit, especially for elements that users fixate on when they scan — that is, headlines, subheads, summaries, captions, hypertext links, and bulleted lists.
Words are usually the main moneymakers on a website. Selecting the first 2 words for your page titles is probably the highest-impact ROI-boosting design decision you make in a Web project.
(via BoingBoing)
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