Blog / Frequently Asked Questions

Want a section on your website to deal with the questions you field most often? Don’t call it “frequently asked questions.” Don’t abbreviate it to FAQ.

FAQ is a term that’s useful to exactly one person: the webmaster. People going to the website have no idea if their question is frequently asked or not. There’s not even any hint of an answer (what else can you do with questions besides ask them?). I’d sooner label navigation “Stupid Crap I’m Tired of Dealing With,” because at least that shows my true attitude to the user.

This is why we have so many euphamisms for “frequently asked questions”: knowledge base, help, support, documentation. Any of those would be better.

But the question and answer format is often useful, so why not rename it to that? “Questions and Answers” or just Q&A. Users would find that. They have questions, they want answers. Simple.