2. We write for many people and many
reasons
• Different reasons:
– marketing
– compliance
– advice
– informational
– other?
• Different audiences and locations:
– public, business, ministers and other government, etc…
– internal (intranet)
– external (websites and social media)
3. One binding characteristic
People need simplicity
[and clarity]
• We’re all:
– time poor
– distracted
– dealing with other, higher priorities
– deluged in information (much of which is difficult to understand).
4. We can help with this…
…by making sure information we present is simple, clear and
easy to understand.
Basic/fundamental techniques:
• write in the F pattern
• keep sentences short
• keep paragraphs short
• Headings to break up textblobs
• leave out ALL unnecessary detail
• avoid jargon at all costs
• WRITE IN PLAIN ENGLISH
Heatmap. Credit: Nielsen Normal Group.
6. Flesch reading ease and Flesch-Kincaid
grade level scores
• MS Word tools
• Show readability based on length of words and sentences
– Note: Māori words (for example) negatively affect this score
• Reading ease:
– We aim for scores of 70-75+ for plain English
• Grade level:
– Corresponds to US education system
Reading Ease Score Notes
90.0–100.0 easily understood by an average 11-year-old student
60.0–70.0 easily understood by 13- to 15-year-old students
0.0–30.0 best understood by university graduates
7. Cloze test
• Take a page of content
• Replace every 5th word with blank space
• Ask people to guess what fills gaps
• Plain English if people can correctly guess >60% of
missing words
8. Hemingway App: visual teacher
One I prepared earlier Actual ‘About Us’
Source: https://www.govt.nz/about/govtnz/Source: The dark inner recesses of my brain
10. Also, consider having a style guide
• It should tell writers:
– what grammar and syntactical styles to use
– how times, dates, numbers and punctuation are
handled
– how to deal with hyperlinks and email addresses
– how to deal with images, videos and other media
– anything else useful
Govt.nz has a pretty good one (www.govt.nz), which is CC-BY 3.0
and forkable on github
11. …and a list of banned words
Credit: Govt.nz style guide, www.govt.nz
12. But (and there’s always a ‘but’)
• The tools are tools – the best work comes from:
– exposure to many eyeballs
– Taking the time to really think through the content, break
it apart and reform it
– practise.
• Learn by doing!
– Rigorous, multi-stepped review process
So, how did we begin attacking the problem? Did we have a list of banned words? Did we have to scour the world for boss-level plain Englishers?
Thankfully, it wasn’t hugely complicated. The team – Victoria over there was one of the originals! – learned a lot from how GOV.UK was doing things (yay open government!), and iterated off their style guide and learnings.
Next, the team developed ways to test the simplicity of our writing and demonstrate the benefits of the site. One of the measures we use is the Flesch score. Another is comprehension testing, including Cloze tests. Finally, we also use a relatively new tool called Hemingway App, which is online, and helps analyse writing so that one can easily improve it.
Speaking of Hemingway App – it’s a tool I am personally really fond of, because it shows VISUALLY where there are structural issues with a piece of writing. And because it’s analysing it in this way, you can learn over time to write more clearly and powerfully. Here’s a quick example.
On the right, you’ll see our current About Us page. On the left, you’ll see something which might be a little more expected on a government website. Because I didn’t want to be mean, I took our existing page and tried to make it murkier, rather than using any real content out there
You’ll see that the software uses colour-coding to help one easily parse any errors. Also, if you hover over some of the errors, like those in green, Hemingway will suggest simpler alternatives
I’d like to make a nod here towards accessibility – the colours used in this app are not very good in terms of that. I’m going to be popping them a wee note to that effect…
Oh, and we DO have a list of banned words :P It’s all in our style guide.
But tool are just tools. Human brains are an immensely important part of the process.
Our writers already had some skills, but everyone learned (and still learns!) by doing as well. One of the main things we did is to set in place a rigorous review process to ensure that all content that gets produced has been through the mill a few times…
