This is a transcript of one of the videos in the plain language training course Writing well at work. There are references to slides and visual material that are only available by viewing the video.
You can access the full web based course at writertraining.online.
Information about face to face courses is at thinkwrite.com.au
Well, we’ve come to the end of the course.
We started by talking about some underlying principles that lay the foundation for writing plain language documents. And then we’ve moved through a process.
We started by talking about PAM: purpose, audience and message.
Then we talked about how we could generate content with mind maps and how we can select the appropriate content by making some judgments based on PAM.
And then we talked about some ideas on how we could structure that information using big ideas like chunking and layering and writing point first. And then using talking headings to get the message across quickly, allowing the reader to scan quickly.
We talked about some writing techniques. How we can’t write in a pompous way. That’s not going to be helpful. We talked about using familiar, simple words, writing with the active voice, choosing to write with verbs rather than nouns, using point first short sentences, single point sentences, and using a conversational style.
And then we talked about how we can refine our documents. Things to do before it leaves our desk like reading aloud, checking readability, checking our spelling and grammar and our style guides, and considering the layout and graphics.
And then the review process, making sure that the document is as good as it can be before it moves around the organisation.
And finally, we talked about testing the document to give us confidence that it was going to work.
So I have presented that content in this course as a linear process going from beginning to the end. But I know that the reality is that you’ll be going backwards and retracking all the way through. It’s not a neat process. But I think having this scaffold of these five big stages of writing will help you as you craft your document.
What we are trying to do with all our documents is to write in plain language.
And that means we want to provide relevant content.
We want to make sure that our user can easily find the information that they need.
We want to make sure that they can then understand that content when they find it.
And ultimately be able to use that content to do something, follow a process, make a decision, learn something, whatever it is.
And the person who makes that judgement about whether it has been easy to find, understand and use is not us as the writer. It is the user. And as writers, they are the people we live for. We want to serve them and give them information that is easy to find, understand and use.
Access the complete course at writertraining.online