Writing a Terms of Use page

Format
First, you will need to decide on a format for your guide. This means do you want bullets, paragraphs, question and answer or even graphics? Paragraphs are not recommended since you want your ToU to be as easy to understand as possible. Bullets are best most of the time, since they are easy on the eyes and people can look things up quickly instead of having to read through tons of paragraphs. Question and Answer format is also nice, though it is difficult to do properly. You should also break down your ToU into catagories. Try to think of 2-5 main catagories. Site Content, Graphics and Comments seem like important catagories. If you have problems with people pretending to be staff, mention a rule against that in your terms.

What to write
There are of course the basic rules "do not steal". However, if you just write that, that leaves room for mistakes. For example: do you allow people to edit your artwork if they leave credit? Are they allowed to offer your graphics on their own site if they leave the credit up? As you can see, you need to be more specific. Try to be clear, but don't go into crazy details (don't make seperate rules for every single graphic type if possible, it gets confusing). Also, don't write the punishment you will do for every single rule. At the top of the page, simply put "if you break these rules, you might be blocked from viewing our site and legal action may be taken if needed".

How to write
Do not use all caps. Its extremely annoying to read and gives the user the impression that your yelling at them. This is insulting and rude to the visitor, who was probally just trying to make sure that they don't break your rules. Also, stay away from words that no one understands. Words like Pilfer (= to steal) or xerox (= to copy) may seem cool and make you seem smart.. but you want to write your ToU to make sure people follow them; not to show off your vocabulary. And hardly anyone is going to bother looking up your terms in a dictionary! Write in short sentances. Try to make them as to-the-point as possible without missing part of the meaning.

Additional Tips
Always make sure that your Terms of Use page is easy to find and has a name that seems logical (though "The Commanments" may sound cool; none-Christians may not know the terms or some people may even feel offended!). Stick with the flow. Call them Terms of Use, Rules, Conditions or something like that.
Also, at the bottem tell the visitor who to contact if they are feeling unsure about any of the rules and want to double check with you.

I hope this tutorial has helped you. With any questions or comments, feel free to contact me.

~ Kathrin