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.
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So you’ve decided that the best way of communicating this information is through a document of some sort.
Organise for the reader
Let’s apply our mind now to thinking through how we can organise and structure that content. A few ideas will underpin that.
The first big idea is we always want to organise for our reader. The reader is the person that we serve, so we’re always going to have them front and centre, and we’ll make sure we organise our content for them.
Now there’s a few other ideas I’ll talk about. I also want to talk about chunking content, layering information, and writing point first. But we’ll get to that.
Let me show you a couple of slabs of text. This first one I’ll read it just because there’s so many words on the screen.
Terrain masking. Terrain masking results from the existence of mountains, hills, trees and buildings between the gunner and the target. The local terrain profile will influence the distance which low altitude targets will be unmasked. That is not be hidden behind a hill or other terrain features. Terrain masking is a primary consideration in establishing a red eye air defence and its effects can be minimised by proper site selection.
That’s one way of talking about a topic. Here’s another way.
Choosing observer sites, the sites you pick for an observer will affect how far away they can spot targets, mountains, hills, trees and buildings may hide a low flying target from the observer. This is called terrain masking. Choose a site where the terrain has a low profile so or not mask targets. The observer has to pick out an aircraft from the background it is flying against. They can see an aircraft that contrasts with its background better than one that is camouflaged to blend with the background. For example, most aircraft blends well with the background of mountains. When you pick an observer site, be sure to think about the background of the direction the targets will probably be coming from.
Now, as you look at those two slabs of texts, you can probably see that they are different in some way. Think about how you might describe that difference.
Now when I show these two slabs of text to people, I often ask them all. Which would you prefer to read? The one on the left or the one on the right? Most of the time, people say that they would prefer to read the one on the right.
And then I asked them, why is that? That’s actually longer than the one on the left.
Does that break my motto of maximum meaning, minimum reading? And we conclude that no, it probably doesn’t because the one on the left, you’re likely to have to read twice so that you can get an understanding of it and figure out what you needed to do. The one on the right, you can read straight away and know what to do pretty much.
The way I describe the difference between those two slabs of text is the one on the left is topic centred. It tells me about the topic of terrain masking. The one on the right is user centred, because it puts the user right in the very centre of what it’s talking about. So it starts off by putting the information in context of a particular task that somebody needs to perform.
Now you won’t be able to write text in exactly this way all the time, because you’re not always writing procedural instructions. But this is just a quick example to show you the difference between user centred text and topic centred texts, and nearly all the time we want to write user centred text. Text that people can read and understand and use. That’s what we’re aiming at.
Now we do want to talk a little more about organising content for the user. I’ll get you to read a document called the Indoor Air Factsheet. You’ll find that in a file in this unit. So I’ll pause this video now and let you have a read of that document.
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