Ask HN: Resource for writing text for web applications?

IIRC, Shneiderman and Plaisant touch upon this somewhere in their book "Designing the User Interface" [0], and Schneiderman's "Eight Golden Rules of Interface Design" [1] may also be applicable. You might additionally want to look into resources that deal with copywriting.

[0]: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Designing-User-Interface-Internation...

[1]: https://www.cs.umd.edu/users/ben/goldenrules.html

You should read The Elements of Content Strategy by Erin Kissane. It's from A Book Apart. As for shorter display copy, starting with a simple, clean writing style is a great start. From there, validate the assumptions you make with your initial copy. You can use tools like Kissmetrics or Optimizely to test how successful different approaches are.

Super idea for a side project! Thanks!