{"rowid": 25, "title": "The Introvert Owner\u2019s Manual", "contents": "Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.\nAlbert Camus\n\n\n\u201cWhatever you plan, just make sure there are lots of people there,\u201d said my husband in the run-up to his birthday last year. A few months later, before my own birthday, I uttered, \u201cWhatever you plan, just make sure it is only me and you.\u201d\n\nI am an introvert. It is very likely some of you are too, or that you live, work or fraternise with one. Despite there being quite a few of us out there \u2013 some say as many as one third of the population, others as little as ten per cent \u2013 I think our professional and social lives are biased towards a definition of normality that is more accepting of the extrovert. I hope that by reading this article you will gain some insight to what goes on inside the head of the introvert(s) that you know and understand how to relate to them in a way that respects their disposition.\n\nBefore we go any further, I should define what exactly being an introvert means, and, equally important, what it does not. Only once this is established will you be able to handle your introvert correctly.\n\nWhat defines an introvert\n\nThe simplest and most accurate way of describing an introvert is that she uses up energy in social situations and needs to be in solitude to recharge.\n\nTo explain what I mean, let us take the example of the The Sims: when you create a Sim, you can choose (among other characteristics) whether it will be outgoing or not. If the Sim is outgoing, when you play the game you need to make sure it interacts as much as possible with other Sims or its mood indicator (the plumbob) will become red and that is a bad thing. Conversely, if your Sim is not outgoing, when you put it in too many social situations its plumbob will become red too.\n\nSo your (real life) introvert might think you are great (you might even be her best friend, her spouse or her child), but if her plumbob is red, or nearly, she might just need a little time and space to recharge before she is ready to interact.\n\nThis is not the same thing as being shy or in a bad mood all the time. We are not necessarily awkward in social situations, but, if we have not had the time to recharge, being social might be almost impossible. This explains why your introvert will likely ask who will be at the gathering you have planned, for how long she will have to stay there, and what she will be doing before and after the event. It is the equivalent of you wanting to know if there will be power sockets in the restaurant to charge your iPhone \u2013 asking this does not mean you don\u2019t want to attend.\n\nThe explanation above might be a simplistic way of looking at things, but I would say it is one that introverts can relate to; call it a minimalist approach to socialisation.\n\nCaring for your introvert\n\nArticles and conversations about introversion usually focus on how to fix the condition and how to make introverts more outgoing: a clear example of our society\u2019s bias towards the normality of extroversion. Avoid this. You will not be able to convert your introvert into an extrovert. Believe it or not, there is nothing wrong with her.\n\nIn her 2012 TED talk, \u201cThe power of introverts\u201d, Susan Cain pointed to the fact that places like school and work are designed for extroverts: students and workers are required to constantly work in groups and speaking up is highly valued. Both types are evaluated against the same criteria and more often than not people are expected to excel at being outspoken to be considered well rounded.\n\nObviously, this is not the right way to appraise your introvert. Comparing your introvert with an extrovert using the same parameters and simply asking her to behave more like an extrovert is a mistake and something that will only perpetuate an introvert\u2019s idea that the problem lies with her.\n\nSpeaking up\n\nYour introvert is likely to have strong opinions and ideas, and to have been listening to other people speak at meetings and workshops. Help her voice those thoughts by creating an environment where everyone stops and listens when someone speaks instead of one which fosters interruptions. Show her that it is acceptable for someone to take time to think before they speak: silences are OK. Allow her the freedom to be herself instead of pressuring her to change an innate quality.\n\nIt is not uncommon to find an introvert who likes to express ideas in writing. The world of web professionals excels in the spread of knowledge that is shared and sought through the written word. Give your introvert the necessary time and tools to write about the job, if she is that way inclined; this might be a good alternative to asking her to speak out.\n\nGroup work\n\nI remember the sinking feeling whenever I heard my teachers say the dreaded words: \u201cAnd now you\u2019re going to break out into groups of\u2026\u201d Being an introvert does not mean you do not like people (or like to be around or work with others). It is just that activities such as group work will invariably drain your introvert\u2019s energy rapidly. Your introvert\u2019s batteries will need to be fully charged for her to be at her best and afterwards she will most likely need to recharge.\n\nQuiet time\n\nThese days, one of the things that I value most at work is the ability to have moments to create and to think in solitude. When I am able to have those moments at the right time I will in turn be happy to participate in group conversations and tasks. Allow your introvert to have those moments: this does not mean she will have to work from home one day a week (but maybe it will); it might simply mean allowing her to take her laptop and her notebook and work from the empty side of the office, or from the coffee shop downstairs for an hour or two. In all likelihood she will come back fully recharged and ready to engage in more social activities \u2013 her plumbob will again be bright green.\n\nLeadership\n\nDo not think that your introvert cannot lead. Cain notes that introverted leaders are more likely to let their proactive employees run with their ideas instead of taking the ideas as their own. I would say that is a positive attribute in a leader. Maybe next time a project starts, talk to your introvert about the possibility of her being in a leadership position or of having more responsibility: you might be surprised at her ability to plan and foresee potential obstacles in the project.\n\nFinal thoughts\n\nYou would not tell someone with dyslexia to get better at spelling without giving her the right tools and enough time to do so. Equally, do not ask your introvert to be more outgoing, or to turn her frown upside down, without giving her the space to do so.\n\nI believe that everyone is an introvert at some point. Everyone needs a moment of solitude now and then, and the work we do requires frequent periods of deep focus and concentration. Striving to create workplaces, classrooms, homes that allow introverts to shine and be comfortable in their skin has the potential to also make those places more balanced for everyone else.\n\nResources and further reading\n\n\n\tThe power of introverts\n\t10 myths about introverts\n\tSusan Cain\u2019s 2014 TED Talk | Announcing the Quiet Revolution\n\tHelp Shy Kids \u2014 Don\u2019t Punish Them\n\tThe Introvert Advantage\n\t6 Things You Thought Wrong About Introverts\n\tExtraversion and introversion", "year": "2014", "author": "Inayaili de Le\u00f3n Persson", "author_slug": "inayailideleon", "published": "2014-12-13T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2014/the-introvert-owners-manual/", "topic": "process"} {"rowid": 44, "title": "Taglines and Truisms", "contents": "To bring her good luck, \u201cwhite rabbits\u201d was the first thing that my grandmother said out loud on the first day of every month. We all need a little luck, but we shouldn\u2019t rely on it, especially when it comes to attracting new clients.\n\nThe first thing we say to a prospective client when they visit our website for the first time helps them to understand not only what we do but why we do it. We can also help them understand why they should choose to work with us over one of our competitors.\n\nTake a minute or two to look at your competitors\u2019 websites. What\u2019s the first thing that they say about themselves? Do they say that they \u201cdesign delightful digital experiences,\u201d \u201ccraft beautiful experiences\u201d or \u201ccreate remarkable digital experiences?\u201d\n\nIt\u2019s easy to find companies who introduce themselves with what they do, their proposition, but what a company does is only part of their story. Their beliefs and values, what they stand for why they do what they do are also important. \n\nWhen someone visits our websites for the first time, we have only a brief moment to help them understand us. To help us we can learn from the advertising industry, where the job of a tagline is to communicate a concept, deliver a message and sell a product, often using only a few words.\n\nWhen an advertising campaign is effective, its tagline stays with you, sometimes long after that campaign is over. For example, can you remember which company or brand these taglines help to sell? (Answers at the bottom of the article:)\n\n\nThe Ultimate Driving Machine\nJust Do It\nDon\u2019t Leave Home Without It\n\n\nA clever tagline isn\u2019t just a play on words, although it can include one. A tagline does far more than help make your company memorable. Used well, it brings together notions of what makes your company and what you offer special. Then it expresses those notions in a few words or possibly a short sentence. \n\nI\u2019m sure that everyone can find examples of company slogans written in the type of language that should stay within the walls of a marketing department. We can also find taglines where the meaning is buried so deep that the tag itself becomes effectively meaningless.\n\nA meaningful tagline supports our ideas about who we are and what we offer, and provides a platform for different executions of them, sometimes over a period of time. For a tagline to work well, it must allow for current and future ideas about a brand.\n\nIt must also be meaningful to our brand and describe a truism, a truth that need not be a fact or statistic, but something that\u2019s true about us, who we are, what we do and why that\u2019s distinctive. It can be obvious, funny, serious or specific but above all it must be true. It should also be difficult to argue with, making your messages difficult to argue with too.\n\nI doubt that I need remind you who this tagline belongs to:\n\n\n\tThere are some things money can\u2019t buy. For everything else there\u2019s MasterCard.\n\n\nThat tagline was launched in 1997 by McCann-Erickson along with the \u201cPriceless\u201d campaign and it helped establish MasterCard as a friendlier credit card company, one with a sense of humour. \n\nMasterCard\u2019s truism is that the things which really matter in life can\u2019t be bought. They are worth more than anything that a monetary value can be applied to. In expressing that truism through the tagline, MasterCard\u2019s advertising tells people to use not just any credit card, but their MasterCard, to pay for everything they buy.\n\n\u201cGuinness is good for you\u201d may have been a stretch, but \u201cGood things come to those who wait\u201d builds on the truism that patience is a virtue and therefore a good pint of Guinness takes time to pour (119.5 seconds. I know you were wondering.)\n\nThe fact that British Airways flies to more destinations than any other airline is their truism, and led their advertisers to the now famous tagline, \u201cThe world\u2019s favourite airline.\u201d\n\n\n\nAt my company, Stuff & Nonsense, we\u2019ve been thinking about taglines as we think about our position within an industry that seems full of companies who \u201cdesign\u201d, \u201ccraft\u201d, and \u201ccreate\u201d \u201cdelightful\u201d, \u201cbeautiful\u201d, \u201cremarkable digital experiences\u201d.\n\nMuch of what made us different has changed along with the type of work we\u2019re interested in doing. Our work\u2019s expanded beyond websites and now includes design for mobile and other media. It\u2019s true we can\u2019t know how or where it will be seen. The ways that we make it are flexible too as we\u2019re careful not to become tied to particular tools or approaches. \n\nIt\u2019s also true that we\u2019re a small team. One that\u2019s flexible enough to travel around the world to work alongside our clients. We join their in-house teams and we collaborate with them in ways that other agencies often find more difficult. We know that our clients appreciate our flexibility and have derived enormous value from it. We know that we\u2019ve won business because of it and that it\u2019s now a big part of our proposition.\n\nOur truism is that we\u2019re flexible, \u201cFabulously flexible\u201d as our tagline now expresses. And although we know that there may be other agencies who can be similarly flexible \u2013 after all, being flexible is not a unique selling proposition \u2013 only we do it so fabulously.\n\n\n\nAs the old year rolls into the new, how will your company describe what you do in 2015? More importantly, how will you tell prospective clients why you do it, what matters to you and why they should work with you?\n\nStart by writing a list of truisms about your company. Write as many as you can, but then whittle that list down to just one, the most important truth. Work on that truism to create a tagline that\u2019s meaningful, difficult to be argue with and, above all, uniquely yours.\n\nAnswers\n\n\nThe Ultimate Driving Machine (BMW)\nJust Do It (Nike)\nDon\u2019t Leave Home Without It (American Express)", "year": "2014", "author": "Andy Clarke", "author_slug": "andyclarke", "published": "2014-12-23T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2014/taglines-and-truisms/", "topic": "business"} {"rowid": 35, "title": "SEO in 2015 (and Why You Should Care)", "contents": "If your business is healthy, you can always find plenty of reasons to leave SEO on your to-do list in perpetuity. After all, SEO is technical, complicated, time-consuming and potentially dangerous. The SEO industry is full of self-proclaimed gurus whose lack of knowledge can be deadly. There\u2019s the terrifying fact that even if you dabble in SEO in the most gentle and innocent way, you might actually end up in a worse state than you were to begin with.\n\nTo make matters worse, Google keeps changing the rules. There have been a bewildering number of major updates, which despite their cuddly names have had a horrific impact on website owners worldwide.\n\nFear aside, there\u2019s also the issue of time. It\u2019s probably tricky enough to find the time to read this article. Setting up, planning and executing an SEO campaign might well seem like an insurmountable obstacle.\n\nSo why should you care enough about SEO to do it anyway?\n\nThe main reason is that you probably already see between 30% and 60% of your website traffic come from the search engines. That might make you think that you don\u2019t need to bother, because you\u2019re already doing so well. But you\u2019re almost certainly wrong.\n\nIf you have a look through the keyword data in your Google Webmaster Tools account, you\u2019ll probably see that around 30\u201350% of the keywords used to find your website are brand names \u2013 the names of your products or companies. These are searches carried out by people who already know about you. But the people who don\u2019t know who you are but are searching for what you sell aren\u2019t finding you right now. This is your opportunity.\n\nIf a person goes looking for a company or product by name, Google will steer them towards what they\u2019re looking for. Their intelligence does have limits, however, and even though they know your name they won\u2019t be completely clear about what you sell. That\u2019s where SEO would come in.\n\nStill need more convincing? How about the fact that the seeming complexities of SEO mean that your competition are almost certainly neglecting it too. They have the same reservations as you about complexity, time and danger, and hopefully they aren\u2019t reading this article and so are none the wiser of the well-kept secret: that 70% of SEO is easy.\n\nI\u2019m going to lead you through what you need to do to tap into that stream of people looking for what you sell right now.\n\nWhat is real SEO?\n\nReal SEO is all about helping Google understand the content of your website. It\u2019s about steering, guiding and assisting Google. Not manipulating it.\n\nIt\u2019s easy to assume that Google already understands the content and relevance of each and every page on your website, but the fact is that it needs a fair amount of hand-holding. Fortunately, helping Google along really isn\u2019t very difficult at all.\n\nRest assured that real SEO has nothing to do with keyword stuffing, keyword density, hacks, tricks or cunning techniques. If you hear any of these terms from your SEO advisor, run away from them as quickly as you can.\n\nUnderstanding your current situation \u2013 Google Analytics\n\nBefore you can do anything to improve your SEO status, you need to get an idea of how you\u2019re already doing. Below is a very quick and easy way of doing so.\n\n1. Open up your Google Analytics account.\n\n2. Click on the date range selector on the top-right of the interface and change the year of the first date to last year. So 12 Dec 2014 will become 12 Dec 2013. Then click on Apply.\n\n3. Click on the All Sessions rectangle towards the top-left, click once on Organic Traffic and click Apply.\n\n4. Click the little black-and-white squares icon that has now appeared under the date selector on the top-right, and drag the slider all the way over to Higher Precision.\n\n5. Change the interval buttons on the top-right of the graph to Week to make this easier to digest.\n\nAt this point your graph should look something like this:\n\n\n\nIt\u2019s worth noting the approximate proportion of your visitors that currently come from organic sources.\n\n6. Click the little downwards arrow to the right of the All Sessions rectangle and choose Remove, so that we\u2019re only looking at the organic traffic on its own.\n\n7. Click on Select a metric next to the Sessions button above the graph and select Pages / Session. You should then see something like this:\n\n\n\nIn the example above we can see that the quantity of traffic has been increasing since the middle of August, but the quality of the traffic (as measured by the number of pages per session) has fallen significantly. \n\nHow you choose to view this is down to your own graph, recent history and interpretation of events, but this should give you an indication of how things stand at the present time. Trends are often much more revealing than a snapshot of a brief moment in time.\n\nYour Google Webmaster Tools data\n\nIf you\u2019re not very familiar with your Google Webmaster Tools account, it\u2019s really worth taking ten to fifteen minutes to see what\u2019s on offer. I can\u2019t recommend this enough. From the point of view of an SEO health check, I\u2019d advise you to look into the HTML Improvements, Crawl Errors and Crawl Stats, and most importantly the Search Queries.\n\nFrom what you see here and the trends shown in your Analytics data, you should now have a good idea of your current status. If you want to explore further, I recommend Screaming Frog as a good diagnostics tool, or Botify if your website is large or unusually complex.\n\nCombining the data into something useful\n\nYour Google Analytics session will have shown you how you\u2019re doing from an SEO point of view in terms of the quantity and, to some extent, the quality of your visitors. But it\u2019s only showing you what is already working. In other words: the people who are finding you on the search engines, and clicking on your links.\n\nThe Google Webmaster Tools search query data, on the other hand, will give you a better idea of what isn\u2019t working. It will show you the keyword searches that are getting you listed in the results, but which aren\u2019t necessarily getting clicked. And it doesn\u2019t take much by the way of expertise to see why.\n\nFor example, if you see your targeted keyword, which you feel is extremely relevant, has generated over 2,000 impressions in the last month but produced only two clicks, you\u2019ll probably find a very low average position. Bear in mind that an average position of fourteen will mean being around halfway down the second page of results. Think about how rarely you go beyond the first two or three listings, never mind to the second page of results, and you\u2019ll understand why the click-through rate is so low.\n\nSo now you have an idea of what you\u2019re being found for at the present time. But what about the other terms?\n\nWhat would you like to be found for?\n\nThis is one of the more common SEO mistakes, on a number of different levels. \n\nMany businesses assume that they don\u2019t need to worry about keyword research. They think they know what terms people use to find what they sell, and they also assume that Google understands the content on their website. This is incorrect on all counts.\n\nA better starting point is to brainstorm a small number of your most obvious keywords, then run them through Google\u2019s Keyword Planner. Ignore the information in the Ad group ideas tab, and instead go straight to the Keyword ideas tab. Rather than wade through the very unfriendly interface, I recommend downloading the data as a spreadsheet, in which not only is more detail included, but you can also slice, dice, sort and report the data as required.\n\nFrom there you can delete all the irrelevant columns, and start working your way through the list, deleting any irrelevant keywords as you go along.\n\nIt\u2019s around this stage that you may hit a problem in terms of where to focus your efforts. The number of reported searches for a given keyword is of course important, but so is the level of competition. Ideally, you\u2019d like keywords with plenty of searches but not too much competition.\n\nI personally like to factor both together by adding a column that simply divides the number of searches squared by the level of competition:\n\n(number of searches \u00d7 number of searches) \u00f7 competition\n\nThere are plenty of alternatives to this basic formula, but I like it for ease of use and simplicity. Once I\u2019ve added this column, I then sort the data by this value (largest to smallest) and I then only usually need ten to fifteen keywords at most to give me plenty of ideas to work with.\n\nThis is a slightly involved but effective methodology for keyword research, as what you\u2019re left with is a list of keywords that both Google and you consider to be relevant to the content of your website. And relevance is an important concept in SEO.\n\nReal SEO keyword research is about making sure that your customers, website and Google are all in agreement and alignment over the content of your website. Other sources of inspiration and ideas include having a look at what terms your competition are targeting, Google Trends and, of course, Google Suggest. If you\u2019re not sure where to find these things, you can probably work out where to search for them!\n\nIf you want to dive further into understanding your current search engine status, search for some of the better keywords that you just discovered and see where you rank compared to your competition. Note that it\u2019s vital to avoid Google serving up personalised results, so either use the privacy, incognito or anonymous mode of your browser for the searches, or use a browser that you don\u2019t normally use. I hope this is Internet Explorer. If what you find isn\u2019t great, don\u2019t despair: everything in SEO is fixable (terms and conditions may apply).\n\nPutting it all together\n\nYou should now have a good idea of where things stand with your current search engine traffic, and a solid list of keywords that you\u2019re not getting visitors for but very much want.\n\nAll that\u2019s left now is to work out how to use these keywords. But before we do, let\u2019s take a quick step back.\n\nIf you have in any way kept up with what\u2019s been happening in SEO over the last couple of years, you\u2019ll have probably heard about Google updates with names like Panda, Hummingbird, Phantom, Pirate and more.\n\nI won\u2019t go into the technical details of what Google is doing, but it is important to understand why they\u2019re trying to do it. At the most basic level, Google understands that there\u2019s a very real problem with people who are trying manipulate its index. In response to this, Google is trying to clean up its results. They don\u2019t want people getting fed up with bad results and considering other options \u2013 have you even tried Bing?\n\nThis is extremely important. Remember earlier when I said that 70% of SEO was easy? That rule still applies. So, for example, if you have a list of keywords that you know are relevant to what you sell, then all you need to do is create great content for them. Incredibly, that\u2019s all there is to it (terms and conditions apply again, unfortunately \u2013 see below).\n\nThere is, however, one simple rule to be consistently followed without exception: that the content you create should not only be good quality and completely original, but it should also be written primarily for the human visitor and not the search engine spider.\n\nIn other words, if you create some fantastic content for a keyword like \u201cchoosing a small business HR service\u201d, then the article should not only make perfect sense if read out loud (as opposed to the same phrase being repeated fifteen times), but also provide real value to the person reading it.\n\nSo the process is simple:\n\n\n\tChoose your keywords\n\tCreate spectacular content\n\n\nWait. Is it really that simple?\n\nUnfortunately there\u2019s a lot more to the other 30% of SEO than just creating great content and waiting for the visitors. There are issues like helping Google understand the content on your pages and website, incoming links, page authority, domain authority, usage patterns, spam factors, canonical issues and much more.\n\nBut there\u2019s the often overlooked fact about Google: it actually does a reasonable job of working out what\u2019s on your website and (to some extent) understanding the gist of it. If you\u2019ve never done any SEO on your website but still get some traffic from Google, this is why.\n\nEven without dabbling in the other 30% of SEO, by creating the right content for the right visitors using the precise language and terminology that your potential customers are using, you\u2019re significantly better off than your competition. And you can only gain from this.\n\nWhen you\u2019ve checked this off your to-do list and made it an ingrained part of your content creation process, then you\u2019re ready to delve into the other 30% of SEO. The not-so-easy side.\n\nUntil then, work on understanding your current situation, exploring the opportunities, creating a list of good keywords, creating the right content for them, and starting 2015 with a little bit of smart, safe and real SEO.", "year": "2014", "author": "Dave Collins", "author_slug": "davecollins", "published": "2014-12-15T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2014/seo-in-2015-and-why-you-should-care/", "topic": "business"} {"rowid": 46, "title": "Responsive Enhancement", "contents": "24 ways has been going strong for ten years. That\u2019s an aeon in internet timescales. Just think of all the changes we\u2019ve seen in that time: the rise of Ajax, the explosion of mobile devices, the unrecognisably changed landscape of front-end tooling.\n\nTools and technologies come and go, but one thing has remained constant for me over the past decade: progressive enhancement.\n\nProgressive enhancement isn\u2019t a technology. It\u2019s more like a way of thinking. Instead of thinking about the specifics of how a finished website might look, progressive enhancement encourages you to think about the fundamental meaning of what the website is providing. So instead of thinking of a website in terms of its ideal state in a modern browser on a nice widescreen device, progressive enhancement allows you to think about the core functionality in a more abstract way.\n\nOnce you\u2019ve figured out what the core functionality is \u2013 adding an item to a shopping cart, posting a message, sharing a photo \u2013 then you can enable that functionality in the simplest possible way. That usually means starting with good old-fashioned HTML. Links and forms are often all you need. Then, once you have the core functionality working in a basic way, you can start to enhance to make a progressively better experience for more modern browsers.\n\nThe advantage of working this way isn\u2019t just that your site will work in older browsers (albeit in a rudimentary way). It also ensures that if anything goes wrong in a modern browser, it won\u2019t be catastrophic.\n\nThere\u2019s a common misconception that progressive enhancement means that you\u2019ll spend your time dealing with older browsers, but in fact the opposite is true. Putting the basic functionality into place doesn\u2019t take very long at all. And once you\u2019ve done that, you\u2019re free to spend all your time experimenting with the latest and greatest browser technologies, secure in the knowledge that even if they aren\u2019t universally supported yet, that\u2019s OK: you\u2019ve already got your fallback in place.\n\nThe key to thinking about web development this way is realising that there isn\u2019t one final interface \u2013 there could be many, slightly different interfaces depending on the properties and capabilities of any particular user agent at any particular moment. And that\u2019s OK. Websites do not need to look the same in every browser.\n\nOnce you truly accept that, it\u2019s an immensely liberating idea. Instead of spending your time trying to make websites look the same in wildly varying browsers, you can spend your time making sure that the core functionality of what you build works everywhere, while providing the best possible experience for more capable browsers.\n\nAllow me to demonstrate with a simple example: navigation.\n\nStep one: core functionality\n\nLet\u2019s say we have a straightforward website about the twelve days of Christmas, with a page for each day. The core functionality is pretty clear:\n\n\n\tTo read about any particular day.\n\tTo browse from day to day.\n\n\nThe first is easily satisfied by marking up the text with headings, paragraphs and all the usual structural HTML elements. The second is satisfied by providing a list of good ol\u2019 hyperlinks.\n\nNow where\u2019s the best place to position this navigation list? Personally, I\u2019m a big fan of the jump-to-footer pattern. This puts the content first and the navigation second. At the top of the page there\u2019s a link with an href attribute pointing to the fragment identifier for the navigation.\n\n
\nindicates a paragraph.\n\nYet (with the exception of widely accepted microdata and microformat schemas) only HTML elements convey any meaning that can be parsed consistently by user agents. While using semantic values for class names is a noble endeavour, they provide no additional information to the visitor of a website; take them away and a document will have exactly the same semantic value.\n\nI didn\u2019t always think this was the case, but the real world has a habit of changing your opinion. Much of my thinking around semantics has been informed by the writing of my peers. In \u201cAbout HTML semantics and front-end architecture\u201d, Nicholas Gallagher wrote:\n\n\n\tThe important thing for class name semantics in non-trivial applications is that they be driven by pragmatism and best serve their primary purpose \u2013 providing meaningful, flexible, and reusable presentational/behavioural hooks for developers to use.\n\n\nThese thoughts are echoed by Harry Roberts in his CSS Guidelines:\n\n\n\tThe debate surrounding semantics has raged for years, but it is important that we adopt a more pragmatic, sensible approach to naming things in order to work more efficiently and effectively. Instead of focussing on \u2018semantics\u2019, look more closely at sensibility and longevity \u2013 choose names based on ease of maintenance, not for their perceived meaning.\n\n\nNaming methodologies\n\nFront-end development has undergone a revolution in recent years. As the projects we\u2019ve worked on have grown larger and more important, our development practices have matured. The pros and cons of object-orientated approaches to CSS can be endlessly debated, yet their introduction has highlighted the usefulness of having documented naming schemes.\n\nJonathan Snook\u2019s SMACSS (Scalable and Modular Architecture for CSS) collects style rules into five categories: base, layout, module, state and theme. This grouping makes it clear what each rule does, and is aided by a naming convention:\n\n\n\tBy separating rules into the five categories, naming convention is beneficial for immediately understanding which category a particular style belongs to and its role within the overall scope of the page. On large projects, it is more likely to have styles broken up across multiple files. In these cases, naming convention also makes it easier to find which file a style belongs to.\n\n\tI like to use a prefix to differentiate between layout, state and module rules. For layout, I use l- but layout- would work just as well. Using prefixes like grid- also provide enough clarity to separate layout styles from other styles. For state rules, I like is- as in is-hidden or is-collapsed. This helps describe things in a very readable way.\n\n\nSMACSS is more a set of suggestions than a rigid framework, so its ideas can be incorporated into your own practice. Nicholas Gallagher\u2019s SUIT CSS project is far more strict in its naming conventions:\n\n\n\tSUIT CSS relies on structured class names and meaningful hyphens (i.e., not using hyphens merely to separate words). This helps to work around the current limits of applying CSS to the DOM (i.e., the lack of style encapsulation), and to better communicate the relationships between classes.\n\n\nOver the last year, I\u2019ve favoured a BEM-inspired approach to CSS. BEM stands for block, element, modifier, which describes the three types of rule that contribute to the style of a single component. This means that, given the following markup:\n\n