Anyone who has ever tried to edit on Wikipedia knows that seasoned Wiki editors can be particularly…

… particular, shall we say.

One such particularity (peculiarity, pecadillo) is actually a good cue for those of us who write for the web.

We’ve been trained by Google and SEO tools that longer is better so we can include ALL of the semantically related, NLP, blah, blah, blah.

But is that right? Is that what users want? Is that going to get us the click, the form-fill, the sale?

Probably not.

Here’s a fun example from Wikipedia of the value of precise language.

Wikipedia:On Wikipedia, solutions are mixtures and nothing else

I find this funny. I also find it useful.

As the article states, we often use “solutions” when we mean “systems,” “products,” “processes,” or something else altogether.

With AI overviews becoming so prevalent, and especially given how easy it is to generate AI content, a succinct answer to a user’s query is probably higher value.

So the next time you are penning content for a user, whether online or off, ask yourself “am I part of the problem, or part of the solution?”