ø Using similar coloured background and text. Ensure your text has enough contrast for viewers to read easily.

ø Using garish or extreme background and text colour combinations. Nothing puts me (and thousands of other web users) off faster than trying to read text on a garish background colour. Keep text easy to read.

ø ALL CAPITALS. THIS IS THE EQUIVALENT OF SHOUTING AT YOUR SITE VISITORS! It's also much harder to read a document only written in capitals. It is acceptable for headings.

ø Flashing text, scrolling text and other 'special effects'. Flashing text is not pleasant to watch and puts people off. The only place scrolling text should appear is in tickers and news headlines (and only in former, in my opinion, as it's very hard to read).

ø Multiple fonts. A good quality professional document will not use more than 2 or 3 fonts on a page. This rule applies both offline and online. Too many fonts are distracting, so if you want variety, decide on one font for headings, and one for text - then stick to them throughout your document. When designing a web site, it is best to maintain consistency throughout site by sticking with same fonts on every page.

If you do want to use a non standard font in your web page, try making it into a graphic. You can do this easily with a graphic editor. Just set canvas to transparent, type your word or phrase with your desired font, then save it as a .GIF.

If you haven't specified an absolute text size in your style sheets or font tags, your font size can be changed by your site visitor. On Internet Explorer, it's 'Text Size' on 'View' menu. So, if you want to fix your font size, ensure it's large enough for majority of people to read, as older people will want text at 11 or 12 points or higher.

Look around on web and you'll see plenty of good and bad examples of text. If you're in doubt about your work, leave your masterpiece a day or two, then take a fresh look at it. And, ask a couple of friends to have a look and let you know what they think.

*Use them only to present printable versions of HTML documents (for example, a long article) or documents that are intended for print. Don't use them to present content to be read online.

*When linking to a PDF file, you must explicitly indicate that destination page is in PDF format. This will tell your visitors what to expect, for example a longer waiting period than for an HTML document, or fact that Acrobat Reader will open within their web browser.

*The best way to indicate that a link will point to a PDF file is either to use Google convention of writing symbols [PDF] before link text, or to use a PDF icon.

*Clearly state file size (to give users an idea of how long it will take to download) and number of pages (so they can have printer ready with enough sheets of paper). It is usually better to present these two pieces of information in a slightly more subdued font color than one used for your page copy (if you're using black text copy, you can use gray).

Finally, even though most computers nowadays include Acrobat Reader as standard software, it is always good to include a link to page where your visitors can download it, just in case they don't have it installed (the URL of current download page for Acrobat Reader is: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/main.html ).