I second Elizabeth's recommendation for Nielsen's articles. I've found  
the eyetracking heatmaps (link included in the list Elizabeth cites)  
particularly helpful when I'm talking to people about the importance  
of being concise and packing keywords into headings and links.

Jeff Johnson's book GUI Bloopers 2.0 has an extensive "Textual  
Bloopers" chapter that applies as much to web UIs as to GUIs; it has  
examples of lots of common problems (including problems with UI  
elements such as error messages) and straightforward instructions on  
how to avoid or fix them.

http://www.gui-bloopers.com/

Another item I recommend to people all the time is Steve Krug's book  
Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability. Look  
for coverage of writing in the chapters on navigation and the homepage.

http://www.sensible.com/buythebook.html

Cathy

On Jun 12, 2009, at 6:55 AM, Elizabeth J. Pyatt wrote:

> Jakob Nielsen has a list at http://www.useit.com/papers/webwriting/.  
> His eyetracking & usability studies generally find that online  
> readers scan rather than read (partly because monitor legibility  
> isn't as good as print legibility)
>
> To summarize, he recommends
...

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