Today I’m sharing a recording of “Plain by Design: Evidence-based Plain Language,” the talk given by Karen Schriver at PLAIN2013. PLAIN is one of the international organizations working to promote quality workplace writing. There is a short bio on the conference website if you’re unfamiliar with Karen’s work. We share the same philosophy: better workplace writing through guidelines based on evidence — hence WITHOUT platitudes.
It’s good stuff!
In Part One of my attempt to explain how I understand plain language, I focused on the elements of a text that must be managed to create a plain language document. Anyone who has known me for long, however, could have predicted that I would talk about the rhetorical context of a high quality document in Part Two. …
In getting ready for my leadership communication class tonight, I have been thinking about power. After all, leadership implies power. Most management researchers differentiate among different bases of social power: Legitimate power (position, reciprocity, equity, & dependence) Reward power (personal & impersonal) Coercive power (personal & impersonal) Informational power (direct & indirect) Expert power (positive…
To celebrate International Plain Language Day, I’m republishing a four-part series in which I defined “plain language” a couple of years ago. Part three was accidentally published last night. [sigh] Here’s part one. Perhaps the most obvious way to define plain language is to focus on the words a writer chooses. For instance, a common proscription…
Those offering advice to professionals who write have long suggested that similar ideas should appear in similar (or parallel) form. In fact, the advice appears in one of the earliest business writing textbooks, first published in the U.S. in 1916. But I’m committed to offering you guidance for writing successfully at work based on quality evidence about the…
I recommend Gavin’s post about pie charts — especially for his “makeover”! Related articles I give up, I am embracing pie charts (simplystatistics.org)
Since 2010, the Center for Plain Language annually judges the quality of content produced by US government agencies. The results for 2017 are shown below. I love these report cards for several reasons but chief among them is that they use an evidence-based approach. On a shoestring budget. Most complaints about content quality are vague. But the…