I can’t believe I just remembered it’s National Grammar Day!
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This is a great reminder that all of us need an editor!
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Friday fun with fonts
Looking for a distraction? Play Cheese or Font? and you’ll be hooked. I warn you, it’s REALLY tough. Type designers are a creative bunch. And interesting. Check out this interview with a type designer named Chank Diesel. The game should technically be called Cheese or Typeface. While it doesn’t matter to those of us outside the…
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You can satisfy consumers and legal at the same time
Thanks to Christopher Trudeau, law professor and plain language champion, I just viewed the Terms of Service for CodePen. Proof that the company takes its consumers and its legal risks seriously! I especially like the clear version of the copyright and content ownership clause: The things you make on CodePen are yours, “CodePen” is ours. …
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What is plain language? (Part Four: Putting it all together in a process)
The first three parts of my series on defining plain language focused on the three aspects of the rhetorical triangle: (1) textual elements like style and organization, (2) reader outcomes like comprehension and usability, and (3) writer outcomes like organizational costs and benefits. To overcome the limitations of any one of those aspects when considered alone,…
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Friday fun with Bob Marley & Eric Clapton
Had to share this silly typeface humor from SoMuchPun! For more language fun today, check out A Walk in the WoRds.
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More on the limitations of style analysis
Not long ago, I wrote about the limitations of considering only style as the textual element that determines plain language (or quality workplace writing). I made the point that over-reliance on style analysis is a reason software tools are not all that helpful. Well . . . I just had time to read the Johnson…
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What is plain language? (Part Three: Writer outcomes)
In the first two posts defining what I mean by “plain language,” I have focused on two points of the rhetorical triangle: textual elements like style and organization (Part One) and reader outcomes like comprehension and usability (Part Two). Now it’s time to tackle the third, the writer’s purpose. This is arguably the aspect of rhetorical context that…
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The Next Big Thing Blog Hop at Pros Write
Pros Write has been tagged for The Next Big Thing Blog Hop by the folks at EIU Writes. Thanks, Tim! His questions about my next “big thing” are answered below. 1) What is the working title of your next big writing project? What would it take to get your organization to write in plain language? (I just made this up…
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What is plain language? (Part Two: Audience outcomes)
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. …
