The Importance of Tone and Style
September 30, 2003 | 
15 Comments
Or, Why I Have a Hard Time Reading Jakob Nielsen.
“Content is king,” the old saying goes, and I agree. A Web site’s content, whether it be words, images, games or applications, is the most important part of that site. The design, the code and all the rest are important, but without content, what’s the point?
When I talk about usability or readability I’m usually talking about the delivery of content, not the content itself. I point out things like font size, layout and findability. Something that I don’t talk about is the tone, or style of content, which is just as, if not more, important.
Obviously there is quite a bit of grey area here, I mean, style is subjective. What one finds pleasant might grate on another’s nerves. There is no avoiding that fact, but I feel it’s in the interest of anyone creating content (more so professionally than personally) to get to know your audience and write accordingly. To fail to do so might mean your message is lost on your audience, and if that’s the case, why bother?
Speaking of points, let me get to mine. I hope Mr. Nielsen will forgive me picking on him, but it’s just too easy. I’ve been thinking on this whole style and tone thing, as well as trying to develop one of my own that connects with you all, and today I came across Jakob’s Alertbox #200.
This article, as many of his do, really turned me off. I realize that Jakob has some great things to say, and he is obviously a very smart fellow, but his style and tone are such that I don’t much care what he has to say, and that’s too bad.
I like to read people who I feel some kind of connection to, I like to feel like I can relate to them in some way. I try to style my writing in the same manner, I strive for clear, open and straightforward communication with as little attitude as I can get a way with while still being myself and injecting some personality into my writing. I don’t think I’m alone in this.
In this particular article Mr. Nielsen comes of as an overly defensive braggart, using sentences and phrases like “taken on usability’s enemies” and “In another victory, I denounced the bogus user metrics…” It’s almost scary, you’d think he was fighting a war.
After forcing myself to read his whole article, I realized that all he was trying to do was give a recap of his past 199 Alertbox entries, what he’d accomplished with them and what the future holds. Simply that, and nothing more.
Fair enough, nothing wrong with a little self-promotion, but where did all the attitude come from? Why not keep it simple? I don’t know him, so maybe this is just how he is, I don’t know, but I found his message really diluted by all the chest pounding and self back-slapping. His last paragraph reads:
In future columns, I will continue to stand up for what’s right and to defend humans from overly complex technology. I will continue to teach companies how to communicate with their customers online and how to empower their employees with more usable intranets. Of course I’ll cover new topics in the next hundred columns, but I see no reason to change my basic principles when they have been overwhelmingly vindicated.
Ewww.
It’s almost belittling to those companies, his potential business, how he speaks of them. Part of getting your message across is making sure the person, or organization, or what-have-you, on the other end gets it. Attacking, bragging or talking down to someone will almost assure your message will go unheard. For someone who knows so much about users, and advocates for them, he really seems to have a low opinion of those users of his own site.
It takes two to communicate and I for one would hope that as we all become more connected, those of us who write for the Web, on the Web and about the Web do our best to make a connection with our readers, whether they be peers, users or customers. It think it’s essential in most cases.
Even when it’s not part of the bottomline, it’s in your best interest to make that connection and write with a tone and style that your readers enjoy, and not only write for yourself, this is true with all writing, but it’s especially important on the Web.
Due to the almost temporary feel of Web content you have only the smallest chance to connect with your readers, and if you don’t they’ll move on to something else. Additionally, because of it’s connected nature, the Web makes almost all writing a two way conversation and no one wants to talk to someone they don’t like, don’t identify with or someone who doesn’t talk back.
A style and tone that resonates with your readers will help you make that all important connection with them. At the end of the day the Web isn’t about technology, it’s not all about design, or usability or standards. It’s not even about content really — it’s about people — a successful Web site enables a connection between people and a audience appropriate style and tone is key to establishing that connection.
Filed under: Web General
Comments
1. patrick h. lauke said:
yes, nielsen never struck me as a “people” person…his principles are often very valid, but the delivery leaves a lot to be desired. i’m sure more people would gladly follow his recommendations if he worked with them, rather than against them…
Posted on September 30, 2003 11:23 AM | #
2. Ethan said:
[snip]
To fail to [know your audience and write accordingly] might mean your message is lost on your audience, and if that’s the case, why bother?
[/snip]
:: pounds table ::
Well said.
Posted on September 30, 2003 11:26 AM | #
3. Gabe said:
I agree completely, here’s the paragraph that really jumped out at me:
This is so obviously false. The things that don’t change are very low-level brain functions that are HIGHLY abstracted away from such sweeping generalizations as “people only understand blue links” or “if a page takes longer than 3 seconds to load people will give up”. People learn from experience, and that experience is constantly changing. Understanding your audience takes more than just memorizing a bunch of rules from an ‘expert’ who isn’t much of a representative of ANY important demographic (geeks not smart enough to actually code?)
This guy seems to think humans are some sort of hard-coded machine that strictly obey specific rules. If we are, the rules are a hell of lot more complex than the sweeping generalizations that Mr. Nielsen is constantly spouting off. Contrary to what he would have you believe, design is and should be very much about usability. The fact that he doesn’t understand design principles or the visual impact of page layout, typography, and color just goes to show how out of touch he is with reality. Sure, usability for most web sites is more important than pure visual impact, but the fact that Nielsen consistently ignores is that people care about more than usability. My experience is that people mostly notice usability (on a Web site) when it is BAD. The look of a site creates a distinct impression and influences how people feel about it. And how people feel about things has to do with an interplay between physiological response and personal experience (why does retro design work so well?). Nielsen wants to discount the experience of a hundred years of graphic design for the purposes of marketing, propaganda, and communication in favor of a narrow paradigm based on software design principles.
The fact of the matter is that Jakob Nielsen is way out of his element. Having lots of interface conventions is a big step towards solving the big challenges in software and operating system interface design. After all, a computer has no natural constraints beyond the limits of logical algorithms themselves. The web on the other hand is naturally constrained to the interface provided by browsers. Web design itself is not much about designing software as it is about presenting information. As far as I’m concerned, Jakob Nielsen knows nothing about information presentation. His studies seem contrived and suffer from experimenter bias. I’m all for usability testing, but I think spending big bucks on usability consultants for web design is a pretty big sham.
Posted on September 30, 2003 01:49 PM | #
4. ic said:
JN is, of course, a smart guy but… his site is hardly usable. We need someone to tell him that usability is also about readability, and that’s what is badly, badly missing on this site. I am talking about visual side and writing style too.
And I don’t think text runing all the way from the left side to the right side of 19” monitor adds much to the usability either.
Shoemaker without shoes?
Posted on September 30, 2003 04:49 PM | #
5. Keith said:
To be honest, my goal with this post wasn’t to point out Nielsen’s shortcomings as much as it was to drive home the point, using Nielsen as an example, that style and tone are important.
It’s fairly obvious that there are quite a few of you who are as put off by his style as I am, and that speaks to my point as we are those kinds of folks who could represent potential business or referrals to him.
Style and tone are important – the basic principles of this post have been overwhelmingly vindicated! Yea me!
Hahaha….
Posted on September 30, 2003 05:04 PM | #
6. Scrivs said:
Ha, this post goes along nicely with my post on knowing your audience. Another funny thing is I was going to write an entry on JN tomorrow because I was really shocked to see what he had written. I mean he has done a lot for the usability community, but I think he has run out of ideas because everyone is catching on to the fact that common sense helps a lot in designing websites.
Back to the topic of style and tone. I believe this is why you see so many blogs up there for the highest trafficked (sp?) sites because they reach an audience better than large sites such as Yahoo or CNN. It is much easier reading someone who seems they are talking to you instead of trying to present to you. Great post.
Posted on September 30, 2003 06:36 PM | #
7. Tommy said:
Funny, I read that Alertbox yesterday, and I reacted the same way you did.
This is a problem for a lot of people with strong opinions about something, I think. Just look at some environmentalists: they strive for a good cause, but their tone is so offensive to most people that their important message doesn’t get through.
You can incorporate a lot of attitude in your works, as long as you do it “right”. I recently read an article on the subject of promoting CSS instead of table-based design. (Unfortunately I don’t quite remember where.) The tone of the article was kind of aggressive, like “You can’t do this because you use tables instead of CSS? Sucks to be you!” This could have been very offensive, but the author managed the difficult balance between sarcasm and humor, and I think those who stick to table-based design might just blush a little and keep on reading. Thus his message will get through despite the attitude.
Mr Nielsen, unfortunately, doesn’t accomplish that, due to his dogmatic tone and lack of balance. If he were to be more “tongue-in-cheek”, his message would reach a much larger audience. And his message is an important one.
Posted on September 30, 2003 11:21 PM | #
8. Dave S. said:
…but we all still read him, seemingly.
So maybe there’s something to be said for his tone after all. We love complaining, he’s an easy target, so he stays noticable. Is his message really being lost, considering?
Posted on October 1, 2003 10:31 AM | #
9. Keith said:
Very good point, Dave, I was hoping someone would bring that up, as I thought that very thing myself. It could be his tone is that way purposefully, to get people to pay attention. It which case I guess it worked, but is it worth it?
To be honest I for one don’t read him much anymore, and with this post it was more for entertainment purposes than anything else. I didn’t take much seriously. How could I? I was almost comical.
I know what you are saying about his tone keeping him on our radar, but I do think his message is being lost, at least to some degree. I’m not sure what his message is anymore, so that should tell you something. I’ve read many more posts on how annoyed people are by him than I have those talking about all the great things he’s done for users.
If his message is “I think I am the greatest usability professional alive, bow down fools!” then I guess he’s right on the money, but somehow I don’t think this is what he was going for. I could be, and often am, wrong.
Though out the years I’ve talked to many folks, mostly artistically inclined, who don’t want to hear anything he has to say. If he’d “tone it down” for lack of a better phrase he might be able to connect with those folks better.
Maybe there is something to be said for his tone. I guess it really depends on what his goals are. Either way, tone and style have a pretty strong effect of how a person, and his or her message is perceived.
Posted on October 1, 2003 10:59 AM | #
10. shakib said:
You can be right about something, and still be an asshole, that’s JN in a nutshell - I should sell the idea to O’Really.
Posted on October 1, 2003 10:42 PM | #
11. Tommy said:
Dave, you are right, of course. But we are actively interested in the subject of usability. Maybe that’s why we put up with his self-promotion and (sometimes) arrogance: because we are interested in the message underneath?
If so, then maybe others who aren’t as actively interested, but would benefit from Mr Nielsen’s knowledge, will leave without reading.
I think there’s a risk that he’s “preaching to the choir,” while most of those who *should* read his sermons are put off by his tone. In that case, his message might be lost to those for whom it really is directed. Just a thought.
Posted on October 1, 2003 10:58 PM | #
12. redux said:
“But we are actively interested in the subject of usability. Maybe that’s why we put up with his self-promotion and (sometimes) arrogance”
exactly. ask any designer who isn’t that much into the usability thing, and they’ll say “nielsen ? isn’t that the guy who said you shouldn’t have graphics on your pages ?”…and they’re then very reluctant to look beyond the veil of strong, dogmatic edicts (which he may or may not have actually uttered)…
sorry, bit of a rambly reply, but it’s too early in the morning for me without any caffeine yet…
Posted on October 2, 2003 01:27 AM | #
13. Mark Thristan said:
I reckon it all comes down to people (like JN) privileging their own pet concerns over and above everything else. To paraphrase Don Norman in his intro to The Design of Everyday Things, everything has its place, and highlighting any concern to the exclusion of others is dangerous - so sure, make sure your sites are usable, but also accessible, aesthetically pleasing, your content structured and consistent in tone, your pages download speedily, you have sticky content, your pages meet your business needs etc etc etc - BUT don’t let any one single concern steamroller all the others. This is true user- and value-centered design
Posted on October 22, 2003 06:05 AM | #
14. Sebastian said:
What’s funny, is his completely obvious hypocrisy. The entire article is about reforming technology so that it becomes based on necessity and not frivilous materialism, but his style of writing speaks otherwise. He ads unnecessary antagonists and a compeltely exagerated conflict that is fuelled by ‘passion.’ It is this same technique that designers use win over certain parts of their audiences, only they do it with aesthetics.
The is just an anti aesthetic douchebag, who needs to get a bad spanking.
Posted on June 25, 2005 07:12 AM | #
15. Alex-xl said:
Are u know famouse russian web designer Artemiy Lebedev (http://artlebedev.ru) ?
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Posted on August 22, 2005 07:03 AM | #
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