LINMO

Guidelines: Page Structure

The structure of pages on LINMO-compatible web sites is very different from pages in hard copy (i.e., printed on paper) books. It is also different from typical pages on other web sites.

One of the biggest differences between web sites in general and hard copy books is the nature of the pages. Particularly important is the fact that the pages in conventionally printed book are virtually always uniform in size, whereas the pages on a web site can be any size, including any length.

Each page on a LINMO-compatible web site contains the full content for a single subtopic (or subtopic of a subtopic, etc.) of the main topic of the site. It is not a sequence of multiple subtopics or some sequential division of a subtopic as is commonly done in hard copy books. The page forms a self-contained article, but one that is connected to other pages on the site with hyperlinks. A self-contained article is an article that is written so that it is understandable even by people with little or no background in the topic of the article (although perhaps with some effort). The concept of the self-contained article is basic to the LINMO (linked information modules) concept.

The key concept in creating a self-contained article is to use a modified inverted pyramid structure. An inverted pyramid is a way of writing an article so that the most important and most general pieces of information are placed at the beginning and other data and detail follow in descending order of importance. This structure is commonly used in newspaper articles.

The main modification to the inverted pyramid structure is that every specialized term or concept (i.e., those that readers with little or no expertise in the topic of the site would not be likely to understand) is defined or explained immediately or soon after the first instance of its use on a page, regardless of whether the term or concept is a hyperlink or not. The extent of detail of the definition or explanation depends largely on how important it is to the main topic of the page. The definition or explanation can be (a) just a few words in parenthesis directly after the first instance of the term or concept, (b) the next sentence or (c) the next paragraph. Information that is useful or interesting but which is tangential to the main topic of the page should be placed in footnotes.

Each page begins with a link to the home page in the upper left hand corner. This link has several important purposes. One is to allow the user to easily return to the home page, which is one of the key pages on the site. A second is to quickly identify the site to users who come to the page from a link on a search engine or some other site. This link should made as short as possible while still being descriptive of the site. It should not be called Home, as this does not help identify the site.

A third purpose is as a marker of an invisible link immediately to its right that leads to the Index page. It is important to have this second link on every page because it makes it possible to keep access to any page to a maximum of two clicks away from any other page. The link is invisible until a mouse cursor moves over it in order to conform to the important LINMO goal of avoiding unnecessary visual clutter and because it will undoubtedly soon be discovered by new users.

A short distance below these links and generally centered horizontally is the page heading or title. The title should be both as descriptive and as brief as possible, ideally fitting on a single line (although this is not always practical). This title should not be confused with the HTML (hypertext markup language) <title> attribute, which is used to summarize the page in a few words to help search engines classify pages.

An exception to the convention of centering the title can be a left margin alignment to signify that the page belongs to some special category. An example is the use of left alignments on this site to distinguish pages (including this one) that are about specific sets of guidelines.

The title is followed by the body of the text, all of which is placed on the same page, regardless of its length. As is the convention in web sites, and in contrast to hard copy books, the start of each new paragraph is indicated by a blank horizontal line rather than by indentation. Although web paragraphs could likewise be indicated by an indentation, blank lines make text easier to read and are also simpler for site developers to create¹.

Another convention of most web sites that is followed is the lack of right justification (i.e., a smooth vertical alignment of the edge of the text). Right justification is almost always used in books and other printed media because of its aesthetic appeal, but it usually is not practical for web sites. It is particularly impractical for LINMO-compatible sites because the width of the body of the text is variable in order to create proportional margins on virtually any size of monitor screen and eliminate the need for horizontal scrolling on smaller sized screens.

Any footnotes are placed below the body of the text, with a few spaces and a short horizontal line above them to indicate that they are separate from the main body of text. At the very bottom of the page is the metadata (i.e., data about data) about the page, which tells when it was created, when it was last updated, the author (if not anonymous), and the copyright notice (inclusive of the year of copyright and the owner of the copyright).

Placing dates on each page is important because, in contrast to hard copy books, for which all chapters are published at the same time, pages on web sites can be, and usually are, published at different times. Including the date of last updating is important so that users will know both whether a page was updated and how current it is.

This page is an example of a page that conforms to the LINMO page structure guidelines.

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¹One reason that blank lines are not used to separate paragraphs in hard copy books is that such practice could add significantly to the amount of paper consumed and thus to the weight and cost of such books. Obviously, this is not an issue with regard to web sites, as the addition of blank spaces adds virtually nothing to the byte size of pages.