9 Using Lists and Tables

A great way to let go of the words without losing essential meaning is to use lists and tables. Lists put active space around each item so that people can skim through the information. Tables take away words that aren’t necessary and let people easily scan for what they need.

Nine guidelines for writing useful web lists

I’ll start the chapter with nine guidelines to help you write useful and usable lists:

1. Use lists to make information easy to grab.
2. Keep most lists short.
3. Format lists to make them work well.
4. Match bullets to your site’s personality.
5. Use numbered lists for instructions.
6. Turn paragraphs into steps.
7. Give even complex instructions as steps.
8. Keep the sentence structure in lists parallel. ...

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