Giving readers the information they want

One of the key writing principles we teach is to think of the reader. We give readers the information we think they want to know. But how do we know we’re right? We recommend document user-testing.

The Office for Financial Literacy and Retirement Income recently wrote a booklet for residents of the earthquake-affected Red Zone in Christchurch. Find the booklet at  http://www.sorted.org.nz/redzone — it presents the financial, legal, and insurance information residents need to make decisions about their houses.

Before the Commission published the booklet, they went to Christchurch. They showed the booklet to a group of Red Zone residents and asked them if it was easy to read, and if the information was useful. Changes were made to the content and layout of the booklet.

As a result, Christchurch Red Zone residents have information and a process that takes some of the stress out of a difficult time in their lives.

Write is encouraging its clients to think about running their own user-testing projects. We have conducted two lunchtime seminars on document user-testing. Fifty people came to each session, so we can see that our clients are concerned about their readers. Find out more about user-testing at http://www.write.co.nz/Document+services/Document+user-testing.html

• Document user-testing tells you what your readers understand.
• Identify and address surprises.
• Validate your educated guesses.
• Try out variations before committing a document to print.
• Understand reader reaction.
• Reduce the need for customer support.

Manufacturers have been testing their products for years. Testing our documents makes good business sense — to make sure we give readers what they want.

Plain English for doctors, lawyers, and college professors

I have to confess that a book title like *How to write plain English: a book for lawyers and consumers by Rudolph Flesch, gets me excited. Luckily I spend much of my working life surrounded by people who become equally sparkly-eyed at such a find.

The book didn’t disappoint. It’s filled with wonderful examples of legal texts, including many contracts and regulations that were successfully re-written in plain English. It even has a section on how to write plain math.

But the very best bit was in the Foreword. ‘Life treats people unequally. Some barely make it through senior high, or perhaps a few years at university. Others go to the finest schools of graduate learning and become doctors, lawyers, or college professors. But even for this latter group, there is hope. They can learn to write in plain English.’

Actually, as much as we chuckled, we know that last sentence is true — some of the strongest advocates for plain English among our clients are lawyers! Times are changing.

And yes. The author of the book, Rudolph Flesch, is the very same person who pioneered the concept of document readability and invented the Flesch Readability Formula. The book may have been written in 1979 but it’s as relevant today as it was then.

*Flesch, R. How to write plain English: a book for lawyers and consumers. New York: Harper and Row, 1979.