Thursday, June 29, 2006

The forecast for www.met.ie is poor

Much has been written about how to write easily scannable text for the web, and yet www.met.ie (despite a site redesign) still insists on using long paragraphs such as:

The weather will be warm, humid and unsettled through the weekend and the early days of next week with spells of heavy, showery, thundery rain in many areas at times. There'll be some heavy showers on Friday night, mainly in the West and North. There'll be more showery rain in places on Saturday, but a fair amount of dry weather too with some sunny spells. Temperatures will range from about 19 to 23 degrees with light variable or Southerly breezes. Sunday, Monday and Tuesday will be very warm, humid days with mostly light Easterly breezes and temperatures reaching the mid 20s. Widespread heavy or thundery showers can be expected each day along with spells of warm sunshine.

Instead of something like...
The weather will be warm, humid and unsettled through the weekend and the early days of next week with spells of heavy, showery, thundery rain in many areas at times.

There'll be some heavy showers on Friday night, mainly in the West and North.

There'll be more showery rain in places on Saturday, but a fair amount of dry weather too with some sunny spells. Temperatures will range from about 19 to 23 degrees with light variable or Southerly breezes.

Sunday
, Monday and Tuesday will be very warm, humid days with mostly light Easterly breezes and temperatures reaching the mid 20s. Widespread heavy or thundery showers can be expected each day along with spells of warm sunshine.


Some resources on how to write for the web:

How Users Read on the Web
How to write for the Web