Plain and Simple Judy

Screen reading vs. print reading

2012-02-29T10:25:00.000+10:00

I've been doing some research recently about reading from screens - and particularly about whether reading from screens is more difficult than reading from paper.

Plenty of people argue that screen reading is more difficult than paper reading, but I haven't found much evidence to support their claims.

The discussions that I'm coming across suggest that screen reading encourages:

More skipping and skimming
A reduced concentration span
A reduced ability to think deeply about information
A 'staccato' quality to thinking. (Dubose and Gray both write about this within the context of legal writing and reading.)

These discussions tend to be based on the writers' personal reflections about their own reading and thinking. I can't help but wonder whether we're seeing a bit of nostalgia for the 'good old days of print', and whether the differences are more imagined than real.

I've only looked at a few research papers on the topic, but they seem to conclude that reading performance isn't significantly different on paper or screen. However, Holzinger et al, in a 2011 study of hospital staff, found that, while reading performance was just as good, reading preference was not. Their participants strongly preferred to read from paper - and this preference was independent of age, computer expertise, field of work, and topic knowledge.

I've also seen some research by Ackerman and Goldsmith (also from 2011) that suggests screen readers may be less successful than print readers in regulating their reading time and predicting what they've learned. Interestingly, screen readers tend to be over-confident about what they learn, and this leads to them performing a little worse on tests.

In my own work, I'm aware that screen reading is slightly different from paper reading. But neither category is a unified, simple group. For example, reading an academic article on screen has more in common with reading an academic article on paper than it does with reading a novel or newspaper on screen.

These days, I find myself comfortable in many different reading environments, and I choose one to suit my current task and location. I almost always read detailed material (like academic articles) on screen, with an open Word document that allows me to take notes. I find this much more efficient and cost effective than printing out the material before reading.

The differences between screen and paper reading make for interesting debate. But it's important that we don't get caught up in blaming the screen for our own inattention. And I think that document type (that is, genre), and our expectations of that document, might be a more important influence on our reading behaviour than the chosen medium of screen or print.

Thanks to Mary Dyson for pointing me in the direction of some useful research on this topic.

Ethical issues in commercial research

2012-02-18T10:46:00.000+10:00

I've been doing the rounds of car yards lately. One sign at a car yard took me by surprise, and got me thinking about the ethical standards relevant for commercial research.

The car yard displayed a copy of the customer-satisfaction survey I would receive if I purchased a new car from them. And next to the displayed survey was a sign stating that the car yard didn't want customers to complete the survey if they didn't feel able to answer 'strongly agree' to every question. The sign urged customers to talk to staff if they had any concerns at all about their customer experience - so that the concern could be addressed and the customer could then respond with 'strongly agree' to every question.

At its simplest level, this sign is all about encouraging customers to talk about their concerns. It's about addressing concerns early, so that they don't become big problems. It's a way of saying that customer satisfaction is important to the company. A way of attempting to appear open to all customer feedback.

But the underlying meaning - that everyone who completes the survey should be ready to respond 'strongly agree' to every question - disturbed me. It simply can't be appropriate to direct customers to give certain responses.

Within a university environment, researchers put a lot of effort into considering the ethical issues that underpin their research. Concerns about whether participants may feel coerced by the researcher or the research questions are particularly important. There's simply no way that the car company's sign could get approved within a university setting.

But in a commercial setting, things are different. There's no process questioning the ethics of the car yard's sign.

I wonder whether other people notice, and whether they care. It certainly bothered me. And instead of feeling that the company was open to customers' feedback, I was left with the feeling of a company that wanted to give the appearance of caring.

And what's the result of the research? Is the car yard left congratulating itself because of the positive responses that it receives? How valid are the results of the survey?

The power of pronouns

2012-02-14T13:48:00.000+10:00

I've just finished a fabulous book called 'The secret life of pronouns: What our words say about us' by James Pennebaker.

It's a fascinating look at how the structural words in our language (pronouns, articles, prepositions, and so on) reveal a lot about the way we think and connect with others.

We don't even notice these words as we speak or write. But Pennebaker says that they broadcast the kinds of people we are. They reveal things like our perceived status and power, whether we're lying, and how we relate to other people. They can even predict how well students will do at college, how well we'll cope with emotional upset, and the likelihood of politicians making certain decisions.

I was taken by the way that structural words can reveal things about authors - like whether various pieces of text are likely to have been written by the same author, and whether people collaborated with others in their writing. And structural words also help to explain whether an author has managed to 'get inside the head' of their fictional character - such as whether a female author is able to successfully write the narrative of a male character.

One thing that Pennebaker doesn't discuss is how we learn to use structural words and whether anything about our learning environment is likely to influence the way that we use them in the future. One thing about pronouns, in particular, fascinates me:

How do children learn about pronoun use? Presumably they just absorb it as they master the language. But the way that adults talk to children seems to make the task of pronoun learning difficult. Parents seem to have a habit of assuming that their children are incapable of understanding and using pronouns - particularly understanding pronouns from the speaker's perspective? Listen to parents talking to their children, and you'll hear an irritating use of the third person, which surely must delay their child's learning of pronouns. You'll hear: 'Come to Mummy.' 'Mummy needs that now.' 'Sam shouldn't do that, should he?' and so on.

Involving listeners in a presentation

2012-02-04T16:24:00.000+10:00

Presenters often use techniques that are intended to involve listeners in their presentation - including things like asking questions, encouraging listeners to talk about an issue to the person sitting next to them, or asking for a show of hands about listeners' opinions.

Some presenters use these techniques successfully but, at times, they seem to fall flat.

I was listening to a presentation yesterday, and I found that the involvement techniques really didn't work for me. As my mind wandered, I got to thinking about what was going on and how the techniques could be made to work.

The presenter I was listening to had a habit of asking the audience for a show of hands. How many people prefer A? How many people prefer B? That type of thing. The trouble was that I felt a bit judged by these questions, because they weren't followed through. So what if someone selected A and not B? What does that mean? And what should the different responses lead listeners to understand about the topic being discussed? In this case, I felt as though the questions were often designed to involve the audience with no purpose, because the question was not carried through to its logical conclusion in a way that would help us to learn something.

My first thought from yesterday's session: Only ask the audience to respond to a question with a show of hands if there's a logical reason for the question and if the presenter follows through with the implication of the responses.

The presenter also tended to ask questions like: Does everyone know about the Z Model? Then, with a few nods, she'd move on. This means that anyone who didn't know the model but wasn't confident about responding was left behind.

My second thought: Don't ask questions about whether listeners know bits of underlying theory unless you plan to get an answer from everyone. If it's important and there's some question about whether listeners will know it, explain it.

The presenter liked to ask questions that were knowledge-based rather than experience-based. So we'd get questions like: Who can tell me what ZYX stands for? And then we'd get silence or further questions until someone responded. This felt like a bit of a challenge, and I was a little tense about it. I had no idea about the things she was asking. When someone did respond, the presenter simply said 'yes, great', without repeating if for the rest of the group to hear. But so often, the entire group of listeners can't hear the input of other audience members.

My third thought: Prefer experience-based questions ('What do you think about...' or 'How do you respond to ...') rather than knowledge questions. After all, this isn't a test.

My fourth thought: Repeat for all listeners the things that other listeners say. There's a good chance that not everyone will hear the comment or question.

Finally, the presenter referred several times to her time limitations in the session. We heard that several topics really deserved a full workshop, and we were only getting a cursory introduction here. We also heard about how difficult it was to confine the presentation to the time available. As an audience member, I didn't want to hear this. The timing isn't my problem. It's the presenter's job to make judgements about the timing and level of detail.

My fifth thought: Don't refer to timing during a presentation. Simply plan well enough to keep the session to time. When the topic is detailed and only being skimmed over in the presentation, say that without complaining about the time limitations for this session.

And, with that, I've given myself a few more things to think about when I give presentations!

Deciding how much detail to provide

2012-01-29T12:50:00.000+10:00

I've been wondering this week about how communicators can ensure that they provide the right amount of information for their audience - the right amount of detail, presented in the right order, in a way that doesn't either overwhelm people with too much information or leave major gaps.

I've been reflecting on two situations where the information seemed to be lacking: in a consultation I had with a doctor, and in a recruitment letter for a research project.

The consultation was with a doctor I've been seeing regularly about my son's allergy problems. This week, he suggested that we should start an elimination diet. In less than 10 minutes, he gave me an overview of what we needed to cut out, how to manage the elimination diet, and how to challenge foods in a few weeks' time. Although the pace of the conversation left me a little breathless, I did get all of the information I needed. But I think that's because I've read a lot about allergy and elimination diets, been under the guidance of a dietitian, and tried a different elimination diet in the past. I wonder whether the doctor made a good call that he could be brief with me, or whether other patients end up feeling lost after the very brief overview. What I really missed during the consultation was the time to think through the implications of what he was suggesting and how we might make the diet a reality in our lives.

The research recruitment letter was sent to GPs, and it gave them excellent background to the research project. But it failed as a recruitment letter (very few people have signed up for the research) and I suspect this has a simple cause: the letter provides background information, not a call to action. It doesn't directly ask doctors to refer their patients to the research, and it doesn't provide basic information about the benefits for patients in participating (though the longer-term research benefits are clear).

Obviously there's no simple answer to the question of how much information to provide and what order to put it in. What's really required is some conscious reflection ... a stage in the communication process where we stop and ask ourselves: Have I said everything that my audience needs to know? Have I answered my audience's most obvious questions? Have I put the information in an order that will make sense for my audience? Have I communicated at a pace that allows my audience to absorb and understand what I'm saying? And, in a face-to-face setting, have I taken the time to check their understanding?

Which direction?

2012-01-25T14:28:00.000+10:00

Here's a sign that's guaranteed to either confuse or get you thinking:

Presumably, you follow the direction of the road (to the right), turn first left, turn left again, and then turn right.

But is that what the sign says? Do the three right-facing arrows simply mean that you follow the road to the right before taking the first turn left? Is it confusing to write 'first left' while giving the visual signal to go straight to the right? Are you supposed to follow these instructions in sequence to lead to one parking station? Or are there three options for parking, as indicated by the different colours on the arrows?

The really confusing thing about this sign is that the reader isn't given a context in which to understand the instructions. If the sign named the parking station or the street where the parking station is, it would help enormously. It would also help if the first street on the left gave a supporting sign (turn left here for parking). But no, the next street says that parking is straight ahead, and that turning left takes you to a drop-off zone.

Good thing I was walking past, and not trying to park!

Alignment as a design tool

2012-01-17T14:30:00.001+10:00

I was reminded this morning just how important alignment is as a design tool - as a way of making design elements look as though they belong together (and communicate the same message).

I was at Hoyts - watching the endless pre-session ads before being captured by Puss in Boots (one of the joys of this school holidays!). Every time the Hoyts logo appeared on the screen, it bothered me.

The logo is the Hoyts name, with little red boxes on the left, and the URL printed underneath with a little open red square at the end to fill in the space. But the second line (with the URL and red square) appears to be just slightly longer than the first line (with the Hoyts name). On my printed ticket, they also appeared slightly out.

It could just be a hairline difference, and it could even be an illusion created by the open red square. But to my eye it looks just slightly unfinished - just slightly messy. As though the URL was added as an afterthought.

Good alignment - either perfect mathematical alignment or, better still, alignment that works for the eye - is one of those designer finishers that you only notice when it's out. But it makes all the difference - in terms of making separate design elements part of the one design.

Editing difficulties caused by layout

2012-01-10T11:04:00.001+10:00

I've been sidetracked this holiday season with a few editing projects - all interesting documents that I couldn't say no to. I often think that my working time is privileged - I get to read and think about fascinating topics, work on documents that are written with some social justice purpose, and help the authors find ways to make the work easier to read. (And yes, I recognise that this sounds kind of cheesy, but it really is the way I feel about my work.)

But over the last few weeks I've been confronted, yet again, by the problems that layout can create in draft documents. Word makes it just too easy for authors to use layout extensively in their documents, in ways that create real difficulties for editors.

I've been irritated by inserted boxes (which create all sorts of problems with run-around and text going missing), inconsistent use of styles (which often means that the document goes haywire when I move sections around), difficulties with section breaks, automatic referencing systems (which make it difficult to correct references and to shift references around), and automatic contents pages.

My real problem with these layout issues is that they get in the way of my thinking about the document. The content should be most important, but I often spend a lot of time trying to figure out how the layout was done, and how it can be made consistent.

And that's before I even think about the minor problems like leading, use of tabs, use of spaces, capitals for headings, etc etc - which are often inconsistent throughout the document.

I continue to resist what would probably be the best practice for an editor: to strip out ALL of the formatting and start again. I usually feel that authors don't want me to do this (they've put effort into the layout, after all). Sometimes, after discussing it with the author, I apply a simple (consistent) layout to the document. But as I do all work using Track Changes (so that the changes can be approved and owned by the author), I think that undoing all the formatting and starting again would make an enormous mess of their original document.

I guess I need to accept it as part of the job, not an irritation that can be solved.

Holiday chuckle

2012-01-02T14:45:00.000+10:00

Sometimes, in the calm of holiday reading, you come across something that makes you chuckle. Like this error in the latest edition of InStyle:

Whoops!

There's nothing quite like that feeling of flicking through a newly-printed publication (always the result of hard work) and noticing a stupid error. We've all been there!

Learning about agreement

2011-12-17T17:35:00.000+10:00

There tends to be a fair bit of eye-rolling at my house when I can't keep my mouth shut about sentence structure - particularly when I notice things in books like agreement, convoluted sentences, and typos.

The most dramatic eye-rolling is reserved for my frequent comment ... 'If Luke wasn't in that sentence, would you say "I" or "me"?'

I also get complaints when I'm reading aloud if I interrupt the story with comments about the way that the sentences are written. The biggest culprit at the moment is Adam Blade's Beast Quest series, particularly the more recent books. They're full of typos and sentence-level errors, and I just can't keep quiet about them. How can children learn to read and write if the books they're provided with are full of errors? (Yes, my children do tend to notice the typos!)

It all paid off for me this week when we were at a swimming pool and my 8-year-old son noticed this sign:

As part of normal conversation, he pointed out that there was something wrong with the sign. And when I asked him what, he was able to say quite confidently that the sign should either be 'Parents must supervise their children at all times' or 'Parents, you must supervise your children at all times'.

Agreement is starting to make sense to him. Clearly, my pestering is working. It's worth the eye-rolling!

Avoiding euphemism

2011-12-01T14:41:00.000+10:00

I noticed this sign last week, in the breakfast room of a small hotel:

I couldn't help but wonder what hygiene regulations might apply here. Is the hotel reception, which is right next to the breakfast room, somehow an inappropriate place to have food? Will the food either become contaminated or contaminate something else?

Of course, the real meaning is fairly obvious: don't eat breakfast here and then load yourself up with a second breakfast to eat later. Or, to put it another way, don't be a greedy pig.

By referring to 'hygiene regulations', the managers are trying to soften the message. But, for me, the euphemism doesn't work: the reason given doesn't make sense. It's clear that there are no 'hygiene regulations' involved here, so the sign is unlikely to have its intended effect. It just comes across as petty and miserly.

I can't think of a good and friendly reason for asking people not to remove food from the breakfast room. And the real reason would be difficult to write in an acceptable way.

But why do we need to be given a reason at all? What about a simple sign that says 'Please do not remove food from the breakfast room'?

I'm aware of some psychological research that suggests people are more likely to do what they're asked if they're given a reason, even if the reason isn't a strong one. But what about when the reason is absurd and contributes to the failure of the message? Surely it would be better to give no reason at all?

I stayed at a hotel once that offered a buffet breakfast - complete with several signs pointing out that a buffet breakfast included two rolls, two portions of butter, jam or marmalade, and one slice each of ham and cheese. A fairly obvious restriction, I thought! Yes, I thought that hotel was petty and miserly too.

Troublesome agreement with collective nouns

2011-11-21T10:39:00.000+10:00

Last week, my 6-year-old son brought home a short reader from the Flying Start to Literacy series. It was an excellent book about Driver Ants, which left us both very thankful that we don't have Driver Ants in Australia. It even included a Glossary.

But the definition of 'habitat' got me all tied up about the difficulties of creating agreement when using collective nouns.

The book says: 'Habitat: the place in which a group of animals live and find food'.

I'd much prefer to write 'a group of animals lives and finds food' because, to me, a group is singular - and the agreement of 'live' and 'find' needs to rest with 'group' not 'animals'. The singularity of 'group' seems to be particularly reinforced by the use of 'a' before it.

'Group' is one of those collective nouns that can be either singular or plural. The most common advice is to be guided by the meaning of the sentence.

I recognise that English speakers comfortably sacrifice agreement in number between sentences, but we usually try hard to maintain agreement within a sentence. We'd be happy to write: 'A group of animals arrives. It includes dogs, cats, and elephants. They ....' ... making the switch to plural when we start to refer to the individuals and not the group.

I'm trying to think of another example where it would be OK to write 'a [collective noun] live and find something' ... and so far I can't.

My usual advice to writers would be to write themselves out of the problem by changing the sentence. In this case, that might be easier said than done.

More on saying what you mean (and salt and fluid for heart disease)

2011-11-17T14:27:00.000+10:00

I've learned something today that adds complexity to my recent post about the advice for a type of heart disease: that the treatment is 'fluid and salt reduction'.

It turns out that, in some types of heart disease, fluid reduction is exactly what's needed because the disease is all about an excess of fluid. So maybe the advice I heard really did mean fluid reduction and salt reduction!

For a non-medical person like me (or for anyone who isn't an expert in the field being discussed), it's being precise that matters. The advice 'fluid and salt reduction' is vague, and it will be interpreted by different people in different ways. With medical advice, that's exactly the outcome that's not wanted.

Saying what you mean

2011-11-16T09:20:00.000+10:00

Sometimes, it's remarkably difficult to say what you mean. And the consequences can be very real.

This morning I heard some advice for a particular type of heart disease: the recommended treatment is 'fluid and salt reduction'.

Logic tells me that the suggestion is to increase fluid and decrease salt, but is that actually what the recommendation says? It could just as easily be interpreted as the reduction of fluid and the reduction of salt.

I'm beginning to notice that writers (and speakers) get into all sorts of difficulties with lists, and this is an example. If the writer is setting up a list, then the meaning is that both fluid and salt should be reduced. But if they're two separate, coordinating ideas, and the reader is expected to understand that 'fluid' means 'fluid increase', then the opposite conclusion makes sense.

My current thinking? Be very careful about lists. And be very careful about being precise in giving instructions. Oh, and if you have heart disease, it's probably best to increase fluids and decrease salt.

I've found an electronic dictionary

2011-11-07T11:25:00.000+10:00

For some time, I've wanted an electronic dictionary - preferably something that would sit on my netbook. I'm often asked word definition or word use questions that I'd like to be able to check.

While I don't yet have a good dictionary on my netbook, I have found something that's almost as good. I've bought an Electronic Dictionary Bookmark - an ultra-thin, flexible, plastic bookmark that holds the Collins Dictionary. I love it! Now the trick is to remember to carry it with me at all times.

I found it in a bookshop in the UK. Presumably it will make it to Australia some time soon. Learn more at http://www.thatcompanycalledif.com/

Is it Daylight Saving or Daylight Savings?

2011-10-02T13:22:00.000+10:00

Today is the day when Australians start their annual summer experience of time-zone madness. Today we have five time-zones, while in winter we only have three. As a Queenslander, it becomes oh so easy to dial in an hour late for teleconferences or arrive an hour late for interstate meetings.

But is this time shift an experience of 'daylight saving time' or of 'daylight savings time'?

I've always assumed that 'daylight saving' is correct and that people who use 'daylight savings' are making a mistake.

I was amused to see that this weekend's Courier-Mail uses 'daylight saving' in its article, while using 'daylight savings' in the accompanying chart. Two different authors perhaps?

Wikipedia suggests that 'daylight saving time' is usually considered to be correct, but that 'daylight savings time' is a common variant. Wikipedia suggests that 'savings' used here is an analogy to 'savings account'.

A Google search brought up examples of both 'daylight saving' and 'daylight savings' - though with 'daylight saving' in the clear majority. Interestingly, the summaries and macro-data often seemed to use 'savings', while the text on the site tended toward 'saving'. More examples of different authors?

To me, 'daylight savings time' always sounds as though there's confusion about whether it should be possessive or plural. 'Daylight saving time', in contrast, makes sense as a way of describing time - though it would probably be more precise to add in the hyphen and use 'daylight-saving time' instead.

And maybe I should occupy my mind with bigger questions.

Electronic dictionary hunt

2011-09-23T08:55:00.000+10:00

A few times lately, I've thought about how useful it would be to have a dictionary on my computer.

I facilitate quite a few workshops, and I'm often asked questions about word definitions and word usage that I'd like the check before answering. How handy it would be to have my trusty Oxford dictionary loaded onto my computer for a quick search. And how much better for workshop participants than to have me give a slightly uncertain response with the promise that I'll check the answer and get back to them.

I have a Kindle reader on my netbook, so I thought that the Kindle version of the Oxford dictionary would be the perfect solution for me. A quick download and a payment of $48 ... sounds perfect.

Except for one problem ... the Kindle for PC Oxford dictionary cannot be searched! A very patient person could find the definition for any word that they wanted using my Kindle dictionary - but patience isn't something that I'm well known for. And a non-searchable dictionary certainly isn't going to work in a workshop setting.

I returned the Kindle version of my dictionary, and one day I'll put some effort into finding a suitable alternative. It seems incredible that Oxford doesn't sell computer-based dictionaries. (Yes, I know they're available online, but when I'm running a workshop I rarely have an internet connection.) I've found free downloadable dictionaries, but will need to do a bit of research about which ones can be trusted.

When I returned the Kindle dictionary, I was struck by the transient nature of electronic books. I received an email confirming that I was returning the dictionary, and then it disappeared! So different from the process of returning a hard copy book, and it left me with the slightly uncomfortable feeling that my $48 didn't really buy me a dictionary at all ... it simply bought me the right to look at a document held by and controlled by someone else.

Background information that encourages action

2011-09-12T10:18:00.000+10:00

I received a letter last week that got me thinking about how much background information writers should provide when they're asking their reader to take some action.

I received a letter from my home insurance company, telling me that I needed to phone them within two days. There was no explanation of why I should make the call.

I did what I was told - but only because the letter was about my insurance, and I didn't want to run the risk of my insurance policy being cancelled. If I received a similar letter from most other companies, I'd simply ignore it.

I really wanted to know why I was being asked to make the call - and I wanted that information before calling so that I could prepare for whatever was to follow. As it turned out, there was a minor problem with my insurance records that was easily fixed on the phone.

But, for me, that wasn't the point. I was being asked to do something without being given any background information about why. And it's always the underlying 'why' that persuades me to take action.

I have a similar problem with instruction labels on clothes. The instruction 'do not machine wash' is meaningless to me without an explanation of why. I usually ignore the instruction and rarely have problems. (Though I did machine wash a cushion once and discovered the 'why' the hard way - the cushion went lumpy!)

And I have the same problem with forms that ask me to provide information that I know is already held by the organisation. For example, why am I asked to provide my contact details and medical information every time my children go on a school excursion? The school already has that information. If I understood the underlying 'why', maybe I wouldn't feel so annoyed every time I was asked to complete the form.

For communicators, this comes back to having a constant focus on the needs of readers. It's about anticipating how readers might react to the information they're being given or the action they're being asked to complete. And it's about providing them with the context - the 'why' - so that they're motivated to take the action being encouraged.

Emails that get opened (and read)

2011-08-17T13:47:00.000+10:00

There are a few basic rules of email that most professional communicators can recite at the drop of a hat. Things like:

Clear subject line
Most important information first
Relevant to the reader
Simple and easy to read
Conversational tone.

Now, I recognise that nobody is perfect and it's only too easy to make mistakes. But I was astonished by the email I received recently from an international professional communication association. It was confusing, the main message was buried, and I had great trouble working out who it was from.

I tend to be pretty choosy about the emails that I open. Like most people, I receive more email than I would like, and I tend to work through my messages very quickly. If the subject line isn't relevant to me or if I can't figure out who it is from, I delete the message without opening it.

So it was only by chance that I opened this particular email.

The subject line said: 'Message from John Smith' (yes, I have changed the name). But the message wasn't sent by 'John Smith'; it came from another person whose name I didn't recognise.

I consciously hesitated over the message before opening it. Although I had no idea who 'John Smith' might be, I figured there was a vague possibility that the message might be interesting.

The email opened with 'Dear Judy' - a good start, I thought. But then it went straight into a quote from Winston Churchill! This had me intrigued, but confused ... what was this message intended to sell, and who was sending it to me? The only thing that stopped me from hitting 'delete' was the possibility that I might be looking at a good example for training purposes.

It turned out that the message was sent to inform me that the association is looking for a new President - which is a full-time, paid position. I figured this out in the 5th paragraph of the message. Most of the message was about the process being used, but it did include a link to the job description (presumably in case a current member wants to apply).

For me, this message reinforced the need for strong subject lines and first paragraphs. Email is about speedy, clear communication, not chatty stories and intrigue. It's the writer's responsibility to ensure that an email is written in a way that will quickly communicate a clear message to readers. That delete button is oh, so close.

Making sense of public signs

2011-07-27T20:25:00.000+10:00

I'm usually the type of person who tries to do what's asked of me by public signs.

I figure that the person or organisation responsible for the sign has given their request some thought. I hope that there's a good reason behind the request and that I can contribute to the public good by doing what's asked.

But this sign by the lift at a bus station has got me wondering ...

At this bus station exit, there are two choices: the lift, or a steep flight of stairs. Several times each week, I arrive at the bus station with a suitcase full of training materials. Does this make me a person with 'limited mobility'? Does my suitcase qualify as 'goods'? Am I, therefore, entitled to use this lift or not?

I do use the lift, because I don't want to carry the suitcase up the stairs, and I don't want to walk to the opposite end of the bus station to use the escalator.

But every time I use the lift, I experience the same tension. What if I'm breaking the 'rules'? What if this sign really does apply to me? What if, one day, some 'rule monitor' tells me that I've got it wrong and I'm not supposed to be using the lift?

A trivial example, maybe. But it's an example of a tension that shouldn't need to exist. Why is the sign needed? And why should people like me - who are perfectly able bodied but are carrying 'goods' that make the stairs difficult to use - be prevented from using the lift?

If I ignore this sign because it makes no sense to me, does it encourage me to ignore the next sign that I come across?

Stopping those door-to-door salespeople

2011-07-08T11:43:00.000+10:00

I have a real dislike of pushy selling tactics. My personal policy is to never buy from people who phone me, knock on my door, or stop me in the street.

Of course, I'm aware of the conflicts this creates for me as a communicator. When I develop communication materials, I often try to grab the attention of disinterested audiences. Yet here am I, openly expressing frustration about organisations trying to use the same tactics on me.

Within that context, I was amused by the sticker I received from my electricity retailer last week. They suggest that I might like to fix it to my front door. Its message: 'Please do not knock. No salespeople, thankyou.'

The sticker came with a message from the company, saying that they've received letters and calls from clients complaining about doorknocking salespeople. Their note says that they recognise that people get frustrated by door-do-door salespeople, so they're providing information about how consumers can get on the 'do not call' telephone register and providing a sticker for people's doors to stop salespeople from knocking.

It struck me as interesting that their solution to people complaining about their salespeople was not to stop the sales tactic, but to shift the blame to all salespeople and provide residents with a sticker. They'll still undertake door-to-door selling themselves, but they won't knock at your door if you display the sticker.

They'd win more credibility in my eyes if they decided to stop door-to-door selling completely.

The sticker itself is interesting. What are the chances that delivery drivers or other visitors will see the 'do not knock' message, and interpret it like a 'do not disturb' hotel message? Could it stop everyone from knocking (except, perhaps, for the salespeople, who are so confident about the value of their item that they'll knock anyway)?

Gaining audience forgivement

2011-06-16T20:33:00.000+10:00

What's the best way to ask audiences to forgive an error? Say sorry and admit the error, of course!

Last week I commented on how I had become a non-financial member of a professional association, because the association made it difficult for me to re-join. I hadn't received a renewal invoice, and was given the impression (via email) that I needed to log onto the association's website and access the invoice myself. It seemed as though the association expected me to take some effort to renew my membership.

Yesterday I received a letter from the association - a snail mail letter, written on paper (!). It said:

Because of an inadvertent technical oversight beginning in January 2011, some members, including you, have not received one or both of the two invoices we send to members about their renewal. We apologise for this error.

The letter went on to say that my membership had been extended until 15 July, to give me time to renew.

The explanation was simple, and my forgiveness immediate. The gesture of extending my membership by a few weeks helped too.

The apology and goodwill gesture not only restored my faith in the association. My impression is now more positive than it was before. So while it's better not to make mistakes and alienate audiences in the first place, asking for forgiveness can certainly help to rebuild relationships.

Making things simple for audiences

2011-06-08T14:08:00.000+10:00

Communicators are usually interested in motivating audiences to do something. We want people to buy our products, use our services, read our copy, and believe our claims.

To motivate audiences, communicators often work hard to make the proposed action as simple as possible. We construct messages and processes that make it easy to buy our products or sign up for our services. The more work we make our audiences do, the less likely they are to take the action we're after.

That's probably why I'm now a non-financial member of an international professional association.

A few weeks ago, I received an email from the professional association, letting me know that my membership would soon expire. Fine, I thought. I'll deal with that when the time comes. And I promptly forgot about it.

Recently, I had an email saying that I was no longer a financial member, as my membership had expired. Not to worry, the email pointed out, I could always renew my membership by going to their website, logging onto the members' only section, and going to the membership renewal page.

Now, either I missed the message that included my membership invoice, or they never sent one. I'm now in a position where I have to take several steps (including finding my password!) to access my renewal information and pay my membership fee.

It's probably important that I'm a member of this association. If it wasn't, I wouldn't bother to renew. They mustn't want my membership very badly if they expect me to go to so much trouble to re-join. Why not send me an invoice - one that I could print out without going to the trouble of finding their URL, finding my login name, remembering my password, and then navigating their website!

Pictograph confusion

2011-06-02T12:19:00.001+10:00

This week I used my credit card to pay for a parking meter. It seemed like a straightforward enough process - follow the prompts on the screen, insert the credit card at the right moment, and it should be done. Yet somehow, I managed to put my credit card in upside-down three times. It wasn't until the machine cancelled my payment and I had to start again from Step 1 that I realised the mistake I was making.

Here's the machine I was using:

I could see by the shape of the machine that the strip on my card needed to go to the left. What I didn't get right was that the card needed to be presented strip-side-up.

Of course, when I look at the machine now, I can see the instructions clearly enough. But in typical reader fashion, I didn't read the text on the yellow sticker that told me which way to put in the card. I was in a hurry to get to a meeting, and a bit distracted by the time it had taken me to find somewhere to park. So instead of reading, I looked quickly at the symbols and inserted my card. I'm so used to inserting my card strip-side-down in ATMs, that I assumed the same protocol would apply here. And it took three tries, with the machine saying that my card was unreadable, for me to realise my error.

In a situation like this, what else could the designer have done? There's a simple explanation on the yellow sticker that will work for anyone who takes the time to read. But most people don't read this type of explanation!

And the pictographs need to be understood in three dimensional space before they can make sense. I think that's where my error occurred. When I look at the pictograph now, I can see quite clearly what it's asking me to do. But when I was parking, I couldn't. I wonder whether the words 'strip side up', right next to the pictograph, would have made a difference?

More mangled modifiers

2011-05-25T13:31:00.001+10:00

Yesterday I received a letter that made me laugh out loud. It was a fundraising letter, so that probably wasn't the reaction that the author was after. But the first sentence created a wonderful image for me.

Here's the sentence:

When I was told I might have leukaemia in 2008 I was shattered.

The image I got was of Mark (the case study in the letter) sitting in a doctor's office some time in 2006 (or around then) being told that, in 2008, he might have leukaemia. It's like looking into the future.

It's the placement of 'in 2008' that causes the problem ... 2008 should relate to when Mark was told about the leukaemia, not when he might have it.

If '2008' is important to the sentence, then it probably needs to read:

In 2008, when I was told that I might have leukaemia, I was shattered.

Another alternative would be to put '2008' after 'told', but the flow isn't quite as good:

When I was told, in 2008, that I might have leukaemia, I was shattered.

Of course, maybe the sentence would just be more powerful without the year:

When I was told that I might have leukaemia, I was shattered.

Time is one of those sentence elements that needs to be incorporated carefully ... with close attention to make sure that it refers to the thing that the writer intends it to.

Mangled modifiers

2011-05-22T10:59:00.000+10:00

I've been focusing a bit on modifiers recently - those bits of sentences that add extra detail or explanation. I'm amazed at how often they're put in a spot that's awkward or confusing.

Take this sentence - which I heard on an ABC news report last week:

'There had been very little awareness for a flood in the community.'

I'm pretty sure that they intended for the community to have the awareness, rather than the community to have the flood. This means that the sentence would have been better written as:

'There had been very little awareness in the community for a flood.'

The message here is that modifiers need to be close to the thing that they relate to. (And as an aside, 'about' would have been a better choice than 'for'.)

Here's another example, from the front page of the latest 'Living in Brisbane' magazine:

'For the past seven years I have worked side by side with Campbell Newman, as his deputy, to deliver better roads for Brisbane's suburbs, more than 500 new buses, and the biggest environmental program of any Council if Australia, which involves bushland preservation, a carbon offset plan for all Council's fleet (including buses) and the planting of two million trees.'

This sentence is long and convoluted. It includes a list of three things that have been delivered in Brisbane: roads, buses, and an environmental program. But for some reason, we're then given an explanation of the environmental program as part of the same sentence.

The explanation of the environmental program needs to be separated off. Ideally, each item of the list should be given the same treatment - either by explaining them all, or by explaining none. One option would be to use bullet points, and give a short explanation of each achievement. Another option would be to deal with the environmental achievements in a separate section.

Coping with unfamiliar settings

2011-05-16T19:01:00.000+10:00

An unfamiliar environment is almost guaranteed to bring my facade of confidence unstuck. It doesn't need to be a difficult or stressful situation - just something that I'm not familiar with. It's all about lacking the 'script' for how I'm meant to behave in that environment. And my reaction seems to be influenced greatly by interactions with staff and the surrounding signage.

A few weeks ago, I ended up buying lunch for my children at Hungry Jack's. Hardly what you'd call a difficult environment, but it's an environment where I lack the appropriate script. The time between my visits to Hungry Jack's can be measured in years.

So here I was, in a busy Hungry Jack's, surrounded by people who knew exactly what they wanted and exactly how to order. My encounter made me feel like a stranger in an unfamiliar land ... I couldn't read the menu board (white lettering on a black background, combined with small type and lots of information ... hardly great from a legibility perspective), and the person taking my order obviously initially assumed that I knew what I was talking about. Her look of frustration confirmed my concern that I was an alien - of course, I made the mistake of asking for small chicken nuggets and chips when I should have known to ask for a chicken nugget kids' pack (or something along that line). The kids' pack wasn't even listed on the menu board! My alien status was confirmed when I had to ask her to explain what was in the kids' pack, and then went on to ask what drinks could be included.

Then last week, it happened again. I didn't know the script for buying a DS game at Target, and I managed to buy an empty box for my son's 6th birthday. It's not a pretty experience to watch the excitement of a 6-year-old receiving a game he really wants followed by the upset of the box being empty. Here's the script for buying DS games, just in case you need to know: you have to collect the little memory card from a counter before you pay at the cash register! Obviously, the checkout operators assume that everyone knows this, because they assume that everyone buys games regularly.

So what does this mean from a communication perspective? I think it means that communicators have to anticipate the needs of different types of audiences. The communication environment needs to be comfortable and easy for people who visit it often and who are very familiar with the script. But the communication environment also needs to support people who are new ... it needs to make sure that they don't feel stupid (or like an alien). In both of my experiences, good signage would have helped a lot. Hungry Jack's would benefit from clearer menu boards and from having menus visible well before the counter. Target would benefit from signs about buying DS games - preferably a sticker on each game so that the message couldn't be missed. Both shops would also benefit from improved staff training - with staff who know how to make new customers feel comfortable and know how to check that the customer is really buying what they think they're buying.

It's all too easy to become so familiar with our communication work that we forget the experience of being new. Perhaps the experience of being in a new environment - where the script isn't familiar and easy - is a useful reminder that we need to consider whether we, as communicators, make the task easy for people who communicate with us.

Pesky possessives part 2

2011-05-06T14:39:00.000+10:00

I didn't expect to find more to say about the possessive apostrophe in Mothers' Day ...

But then I received an email from Grammar Girl, letting me know that I should write Mother's Day - it's singular possessive because the day is about families honouring their individual mothers, rather than being a plural possessive honouring of all mothers.

I'm still not completely convinced. I looked up that source of trustworthy information, Wikipedia, and learned that Mother's Day was trademarked by Anna Jarvis in the USA in 1912. In 1914, it was made an official holiday in the USA. Apparently Anna Jarvis was specific about the singular possessive, because it was an occasion for individual families. Anna later became dismayed by the commercialism of the day.

Mothering Sunday in the UK has a separate heritage. It's on the fourth Sunday in Lent, and can be traced back at least to Roman times. It was originally a religious festival, where people visited their mother church - usually with their own mothers and other family members.

So where does that leave us today, in Australia? I think that the day we call Mothers' Day is about celebrating all mothers, so I like the plural possessive. Interestingly, my preference could partly be because I'm never called 'mother', and I wouldn't ever call anyone 'mother'. I'm 'mum'! And while I see Mothers' Day as plural possessive, I think I'd be quite comfortable about Mum's Day - a day for me as an individual mum.

So mums, enjoy your burned toast, flowers, and smelly candles! Happy Mothers' Day (or Mum's Day).

By the way, Grammar Girl's regular email comes from Macmillan.

Signs intended to calm disgruntled customers

2011-05-01T20:38:00.000+10:00

Is it possible for organisations to diffuse customer frustration using signs? The ultimate message of the signs is: Please, don't get frustrated with us; this is the way our system works, and we're not going to change it for you.

I've come across two examples of these signs recently, and I felt that one was much more successful than the other. In fact, the second only increased my frustration.

Here's the one that I liked.

I know that my poorly-taken pic isn't easy to read. It's a sign in a cafe and, while the expression might be a bit awkward, the message is simple enough. They're saying that cooking fresh food takes time and, if you don't have some time to wait and enjoy the beach-side atmosphere, then please don't bother ordering at this cafe. A similar message inside encourages customers to come back another day or to order pre-prepared food if they don't have time to wait today.

I quite liked this little sign - it made me appreciate the work of the staff and encouraged me to slow down a bit.

Here's the other sign, which I encountered while waiting in a queue at Melbourne airport.

I found the tone of this message quite aggressive, and it made me even more irritated by the queue I was in.

Of course, both signs need to be taken in context. One belongs in a lazy cafe beside a little beach. The other is in a busy airport. And the airport sign is experienced in the context of waiting for the staff at the Service Desk ... in my case because the self-check for baggage wouldn't work for me.

But in the context of the airport, I can't help but wonder whether signs like this might work to increase people's frustration levels (as this one did for me) and encourage a usually quiet passenger to complain (as I did). Some people will always complain when things go wrong, and the sign won't make any difference to them. But most people can put up with irritations - to a point. But when that point is reached, they're likely to express their frustration to the closest staff member. And it's just possible that the tone of the sign will be the push that's needed.

For me it was. My partner and I were travelling with 2 children, 3 cases, 2 children's car seats, and assorted hand luggage. We managed the self-check system for our boarding passes and baggage tags just fine. But keeping everyone in close proximity while we attached the baggage tags wasn't easy. And navigating the self-check system for baggage wasn't very successful ... children getting their hands in the way of the scanner, the machine not liking the shape of our bags, the scales not able to pick up the weight of the car seats ... you get the picture. So, of course, we set off for the Service Desk to deposit our car seats, only to encounter a longer, slower queue than we would have experienced in the old days ... back when staff checked-in people's bags rather than helping people to do it themselves.

And then I find the sign ...

Pesky possessives

2011-04-26T05:40:00.000+10:00

That day for mothers is fast approaching, and with it comes a possessive apostrophe question. Should you wish your mother:

Happy Mothers Day,
Happy Mother's Day, or
Happy Mothers' Day?

The widespread consensus appears to be for Mother's Day. That's what you'll find on cards, in ads, and on most of the signage in shops. That makes it a day for mother.

Mind you, last week I read about a restaurant chain that's offering a special Mother's Day breakfast, with a free kids banquet. Maybe it doesn't make sense to take too much notice of the apostrophes used in advertising.

For me, the day isn't just a day for mother. I think of it as a day for mothers ... all mothers. A day when, yes, you might celebrate your own mother, but nearly all mothers are celebrating. It's a day of collective consumption and celebration - when all mothers expect (want) to be pampered.

That makes it Mothers' Day ... with the apostrophe showing the plural possessive.

And even in the face of everyone else sticking to the singular Mother's Day, I'll continue to use my apostrophe to show the plural possessive.

Part of my rationale is to experiment with replacing 'mother' with other collective terms, and see whether they sound sensible. For example, I think we'd have a Children's Day, but not a Child's Day; and we'd have a People's Day, not a Person's Day. In Brisbane, we're quite comfortable with the idea of a People's Day - we have one at our Exhibition every year.

So for me, it's Mothers' Day. Unless we want to go with the traditional British form of 'mothering Sunday'.

Have a good one mums. (And if you're wondering why I've capitalised Mothers' Day throughout - it's simply to provide a visual distinction for the name, instead of messing everything up with single quote marks.)

Those way wood sheep

2011-04-19T09:36:00.001+10:00

Sometimes I come across a writing error that makes me laugh out loud.

Last week I was reading a magazine article, and encountered this sentence ... 'On January 1, 2009, I shuffled along a country road, keeping an eye out for the usual hazards - farm dogs, way wood sheep.'

I wonder whether those wayward, self-willed, and unpredictable sheep had any idea what was ahead of them as they went the way of the woods?

I hesitate to call this sort of mistake a typo, because there's an assumption with a typo that the writer/editor is able to locate and fix it. Word-use mistakes happen when writers use a term that they've heard in spoken language (and probably used themselves), but haven't seen written down. They're caused by not reading widely, and not encountering the nuance of language in written form.

When I was teaching at QUT, I used to collect word-use mistakes on my whiteboard. I wish I still had the collection. The few that I can remember now are 'eye-con' (icon) and 'the smorning' (this morning). Yes, I really did come across these - and quite often!

This is a plea for wide reading and careful editing ... for editors who, while they may not know the difference between 'way wood' and 'wayward', take enough care to question whether 'way wood' can really be correct, and either look it up or ask a friend.

Obviously writers and editors can't be expected to know all the answers - good writing and editing is a constant process of learning about language. But writers and editors do need to know enough to ask the questions that will help them to find the answers.

Postscript. My 5-year-old son has been downstairs singing about 'the ostrich of the earth'. I can't bring myself to tell him that it's really 'the arse end of the earth'! Maybe he doesn't need to know.

Seeing (but not reading) red

2011-04-14T20:30:00.000+10:00

Churches and schools around Brisbane often use display signs to announce upcoming events or communicate words of wisdom. Most remain outside the digital age, and have a manual sign like the one shown above. They all seem to have a set of black and red letters, and the signs usually incorporate a combination of black and red words within their messages.

I often notice that key words are put up in red ... presumably to attract the attention of passers-by. There's some logic in the idea that the most important bits should be in red.

The red certainly works to attract attention, but it has a problem in terms of legibility. The red words are much more difficult to read than the black words. Reading the red requires readers to be closer, and it takes more time. This is because the contrast between the red letters and the white background isn't as great as the contrast between the black letters and the white background.

I've been going past the above example every morning this week, and I always notice that I can read 'comes from not wanting to' well before I can make out 'peace of mind' and 'change people'.

So while the red grabs attention, it doesn't help with legibility. The organisations that craft these messages might benefit from using their red letters for their least important words - so that the red can attract attention while allowing the message to be easily read from the greatest distance possible.

Learning about document structure

2011-04-08T19:26:00.000+10:00

Last week, Radio National's Life Matters program featured an interview with Cyril Peupion, author of 'Work Smarter: Live Better'. Cyril was talking about people's inefficiencies at work - particularly with tasks like email.

Cyril noted that most people start their working lives with little idea about how to work efficiently. It's not something that's taught either at school or university. Given the 1,131 email messages currently in my In Box, with 282 of them being unread, maybe I need to pay some attention to Cyril Peupion's techniques. Instead, he got me thinking about writing and editing.

Many workplace writers feel that their writing is inefficient. They lack confidence, and they often base their writing on the examples of others, because they're not sure what else to do.

I think that workplace writers struggle most with document structure. Maybe that's because, like basic work efficiency, it's something that's not taught very well at school or university.

I mentioned this in a writing workshop this week, and most of the participants agreed: their education gave them little understanding about how to write at work - particularly how to develop a document structure.

I think that the best approach to document structure is to not worry about it too much during the initial drafting and content development stages. OK, it can be handy to plan a document with headings or ideas that are clustered or grouped into hierarchies. But this process doesn't need to be too exact, and there's no need to worry about getting the structure perfect at this stage.

Once the basic content is written down, writers have figured out what they want to say and how the argument will develop. This is the time to think carefully about structure. It makes sense to spend a lot of time revising that first draft, and to start by looking carefully at the order of the content. Is each idea in the best position? Is there any repetition? Should any ideas that are currently separated be moved more closely together? This is the time to shift around ideas and create new sections. Keep at it until there is a logical flow of ideas, presented in an order that will make the best possible impression on readers.

For me, most of the thinking about document structure happens in the early stages of revising. A focus on document structure is, in part, a recognition that documents need to be revised multiple times, with a slightly different focus each time.

Now, I'd better implement some of Cyril Peupion's advice and attack my In Box. Deal with each message once, and remove it from the In Box. Respond immediately if it will take less than 2 minutes. Otherwise, schedule time to do the work. Yeah, right ... maybe I'll start tomorrow.

Communicating through distraction

2011-04-01T14:42:00.000+10:00

This morning I attended a fascinating breakfast seminar about distraction. It was called 'Neuroscience of Distraction: Managing Distraction and Maintaining Focus', and was presented by Geoff Grahl from Australian Aeorspace. The organiser was NeuroLeadership Solutions.

Geoff made several comments about distraction that resonated strongly for me. For example:

The more information we receive, the more likely we are to be distracted (this reminds me of Richard Wurman's book 'Information Anxiety').
When we are distracted from a task at work, only 41% of us actually return to the original task.
We're not successful multi-taskers ... that is, we can't do several things at once. Rather, we parallel task by rapidly switching between tasks.
When we switch between tasks, there is a 'switch cost' - particularly in terms of time and accuracy.
When we feel overwhelmed by work and have trouble prioritising tasks, this becomes a distraction in itself.

Geoff asked us to complete a little activity during his presentation, by keeping a tally of our 'focussed distractions' (what he said just made me think of ...) and our 'unfocussed distractions' (the bar behind him is very well stocked ...). For me, the activity itself was a distraction (and maybe that was partly the point). The time taken to notice the distraction, put a mark on my tally sheet, and then focus back on listening, was too much for me ... I decided that I'd be less distracted without the activity.

As communicators, we deal in the business of distraction. Ultimately, we want to distract our audiences away from their current work/thoughts and towards the thing that we're communicating about. At the same time, we seek to communicate in such a way that other distractions (things that are not relevant to our message) can easily be ignored. We constantly shout 'listen to me' while we whisper 'ignore them'.

Within our messages, distraction is also relevant. It makes sense to limit the things that will distract from our main message - perhaps by avoiding moving or flashing visuals on our website, perhaps by avoiding design clutter, and perhaps by avoiding content that doesn't really contribute to the main message.

I'm keen to learn more about distraction ... both in terms of how I can manage distractions in my day-to-day work, and in terms of how I can create communication tools that limit the potential for audience distraction (things that are so engaging that people will remain focused!).

Grabbing the attention of disinterested audiences

2011-03-28T19:02:00.000+10:00

I was talking last week to our local school Principal about the difficulties that the school faces in communicating with parents.

The Principal often receives complaints from parents that they don't know what is happening - whether it's a special activity at the school, some type of social function, or a request for a form to be completed. Parents often say that they would have been involved in an activity, if they had known it was happening.

The Principal is at a loss about what to do. She works hard to communicate with parents: she includes information in the regular school newsletter, sends material home with children, and encourages the children to talk to their parents about school activities.

What else can she do?

The Principal's frustration is one that is common for many organisations. Often organisations are providing information that their audiences need (or will benefit from in some way). But their audiences aren't interested. And grabbing the attention of disinterested audiences is a constant challenge.

I think it makes sense to start with the assumption that audiences often don't know and don't care about your message. As a communicator, your job is to attract their attention and persuade them to take notice. So what strategies are available for catching the attention of disinterested audiences?

The most obvious option is to add to the general communication clutter by making your message available in multiple locations and on multiple occasions. So instead of announcing an event once in the newsletter, announce it four or five times. Combine this with as many other channels of information as you can (such as posters, flyers, websites, emails, and so on).

It also makes sense to construct your message from the point of view of the audience. As you write your message, think about what the experience of receiving it will be like, and how you can structure it so that it's interesting to the audience. Why should the audience care? What's in it for them? In the school setting, how can you persuade children to take the message home to their parents?

Another option is to use some device to attract the audience's attention - perhaps by incorporating something that is more immediately appealing (free offers, emotional stories, good photographs, personal salutations, and so on often make sense here).

There's no point in blaming the audience if they don't attend to your message (tempting though it might be). Ultimately, if you have a message that you want to communicate, it's your problem, not the audience's. If the communication doesn't achieve its goal, then you, as the communicator, need to think about making some change. And of course, you'll never be noticed by everyone.

Success with email

2011-03-24T10:39:00.000+10:00

This month in The Writing Circle, we've been talking about email - about our email successes and failures, and about our likes and dislikes.

One theme that came through very strongly is the speed with which emails are read and acted upon, and the problems this can create for both writers and readers.

We talked about the way that readers often don't read an entire email message. Instead, they read the first paragraph or two, jump to some conclusion about what they're meant to do, act upon that, and delete the message. For writers, the warning here is that if you include multiple points in an email, it's possible that only the first point or two will be noticed. It also means that you need to put the real point of your message (the call to action) right at the top.

We also talked about the way that an email conversation can become long and unnecessarily complicated when the most simple decisions are being made. For example, I recently tried to arrange via email a meeting with a work colleague who was visiting Brisbane. After 6 messages and no conclusion, I picked up the phone. Sometimes, it just makes more sense to talk on the phone - particularly for something that involves negotiating a diary.

Writing Circle members wondered whether there were any emerging conventions for salutations in email. They tended to prefer to start work emails with salutations such as 'Hi' or 'Hello', and to sign off with something like 'Cheers'. In more formal situations, they might use 'Dear' and 'Regards'. They tended to dislike messages that include no salutation at all (unless the message is part of an ongoing conversation).

So the conclusion about email? Based on our discussions in The Writing Circle, and a bit of reading about the topic, I suggest that emails are best written as a conversational letter (carefully written and following the rules of good writing, but tending towards informality). It makes sense to give email as much care and attention as other forms of communication.

Versus, verse, versing

2011-03-17T13:23:00.000+10:00

I'm fascinated by the way that language changes.

And while it's often tempting to speak out against the 'incorrect' use of language, most often the force for change is so strong that we can do little more than take note.

Over the past year or so, I've noticed that the words used by children to describe sporting competitions do not follow typical dictionary definitions. They've taken the preposition 'versus' and turned it into a word with great flexibility.

During the sports report at our local primary school, I hear 'Last week we versed Wilston and won', and 'Next week we'll be versing Kelvin Grove'. My children constantly 'verse' each other in battle.

I've taken to asking parents and teachers about the use of 'verse', 'versing' and 'versed' instead of 'versus' or 'played against' ... and the thing that has surprised me most is that no one else seems to notice.

Last week I heard it on the radio for the first time ... that Team A 'versed' Team B. And it was Radio National!

I wonder whether this change is happening everywhere? And I wonder how long it will take for the dictionaries to catch up?

At the moment, we have these definitions in the Oxford:

Versus: against or as opposed to
Verse: writing arranged with a metrical rhythm
Versing: to speak in verse
Versed: experienced or skilled in

Will they all come to mean different aspects of 'against (in a sporting sense)'? And does it really matter?

When (and how) to end

2011-03-15T12:55:00.001+10:00

Ending a document (or a chapter or a section) can be troublesome. How do you tie all the ideas together and come to some conclusion? How do you give readers a sense that the document is coming to a close?

And then there are questions about the placement of ideas. ... Is this the best place for the main idea? The final thought? The real take-home message?

If you're writing a novel, maybe you want to build up to a dramatic conclusion. My children love Enid Blyton novels, and she's a master of a technique that forces you to want to read the next chapter by giving you a tiny taste of what is to come. I end each chapter to cries of ... 'But you can't stop there! It's too exciting!'.

But in business writing, it usually makes sense to just end. Forget about the idea of writing a conclusion. Say what you want to say, and put it in an order that will make most sense for the reader. If you have a key take-home message, put it first.

It makes sense to think about a business document as a type of funnel that gives the most important material first. This applies both to the entire document and to each section. Putting the most important material first helps readers who are in a hurry - they can quickly grab what they need to know and then stop reading.

In a document with multiple sections, it works best to simply end each section (without writing a conclusion) and move on to the heading of the next section. You don't need to write a transition that sums up the previous section and leads into the next. Readers make the conceptual shift into a new section when they see your heading.

Some time ago, I read an interesting book by Bob Burton about the PR industry (called 'Inside Spin'). While I enjoyed the content, it took me some time to figure out what was irritating me about the book's structure. It was all about transitions between chapters. At the end of most chapters, instead of just stopping, Burton writes a short summary of the chapter and then gives a link (often just one sentence) into the chapter that comes next. As a reader, I kept wondering what the new concept had to do with what I had just read. Eventually I worked out that it was intended as a gentle way of leading into the new chapter. It didn't work for me as a transition (the chapter title does a better job at this). Instead, it only confused me as a reader. For example, a chapter about the pharmaceuticals industry ends with a mention of tobacco (which is the first case in the next chapter).

Sound structure = sound document core

2011-03-10T12:00:00.001+10:00

As a writer and editor, I spend a lot of time thinking about the structure of documents.

A poorly structured document can create so many problems for readers ... ideas that belong together may not be presented together, ideas may not be introduced in a logical order, and important concepts may be explained in the wrong place.

When I edit the work of others, it's the structure that I focus on most. As I read through a draft document, I put together a brief document map (a few-word summary) and question whether the order is logical for a new reader. Often, I bring disparate parts of a document together, take the author's original conclusion and move it near the beginning, and add an entirely new introduction.

Structure seems to be difficult to explain and difficult to teach. I don't find the traditional document planning tools to be very helpful. Instead, I prefer to focus on structure after I've written a first draft (and the content questions are out of the way). I review structure by asking myself questions about how readers are likely to interact with the document I'm writing.

I have a communication text on my bookshelf that seems to me to be a remarkable example of document structure. The structure not only works in the sense of document order and idea clustering, it also works with the book's design.

Jean-luc Doumont's book, 'Trees, Maps, and Theorems' (2009, Principiae), is structured into a series of double-page-spreads. Each section includes a contents list that shows how the section fits within the entire book. Each double-page-spread includes 4 columns - one for the text, one for illustrations and comments, one for advice, and one for frequently asked questions. This structure is clearly explained at the beginning of the book. Most remarkably, each section and sub-section fits perfectly within its page. You never turn a page mid-sentence, and you never start a section mid-way down the page!

As a reader, it's impossible to get lost in Doumont's book. The text structure and document design work perfectly together to make the book a pleasure to work with. And though his writing style is slightly formal at times, the overall result is excellent. If you're looking for an example of workable, interesting, and innovative book structure, you can't go past 'Trees, Maps, and Theorems'.

2 space or not 2 space

2011-03-04T14:19:00.000+10:00

When you write, are you a double spacer or a single spacer? That is, do you leave two spaces after a full stop, or just one?

If any question is guaranteed to start an argument in a writing discussion, it's this one. People who learned to type on typewriters (remember them?) tend to advocate strongly for two spaces. People who have actually been taught wordprocessing (and they're few and far between) prefer to use one. And then of course, there are people who don't know, don't care, and don't notice the difference.

The general rule of thumb is to use just one space after a full stop when wordprocessing. This is because the proportional typefaces used by computers leave plenty of space between sentences. A second space tends to make the sentences lose their spatial relationship. In contrast, traditional typewriter fonts tend to need two spaces after a full stop because every element of the typeface takes up exactly the same space. (I've used two spaces in this paragraph. Notice how strange it looks.)

In her Wednesday 15 December 2010 calendar entry, Lynne Truss (author of 'Eats, Shoots & Leaves') wrote: 'Until very recently, typists were taught to leave a two- or even three-space gap after a full stop, but now word-processing programs will automatically reduce the gap to a single word space'.

Maybe my understanding of wordprocessing macros is limited, but I've never seen an automatic change. When I edit documents for clients, the first thing that I do is search for two spaces and replace them with single spaces. Often the find and replace function will make several hundred changes.

Of course, like most things in writing, consistency is what matters most. So, if you prefer to use two spaces, at least be consistent about it.

When nouns become verbs

2011-02-28T14:05:00.000+10:00

I've never been completely comfortable with nouns that transform into verbs.

I've learned to put up with 'impact' and 'action'. The Telstra person I was speaking to today continually promised to 'action my request', and I barely grimaced. I just hope that she really does follow through!

But when did 'message' become a verb? This morning I received this ... 'Sorry to message you so late ...'.

Yes, I know, it's all part of the way that language develops. And part of the beauty of English is our ability to do this. But it still grates ... more than a little.

Communicating in the face of disasters

2011-02-28T11:44:00.000+10:00

Last Saturday's 'Background Briefing' on ABC Radio National was about disasters - how to plan for them, how to manage them, and how to communicate about them. The conversation about the benefits (or otherwise) of centralised control during disasters and about the benefits (or otherwise) of spreading insurance risk was fascinating. But what really caught my attention was the conversation about disaster communication.

From the perspective of clear communication, three comments stood out for me:

The way that we communicate the risk of a disaster gives false hope that a disaster is unlikely to happen
Disaster warnings are so full of technical jargon that many people find them meaningless
Calls for better community education about disaster have been ignored.

The way we communicate disaster risk

In Queensland we've become very familiar with the idea of the '1-in-100-year disaster'. We now talk confidently about the 1-in-100-year flood, or the 1-in-100-year cyclone.

But there's a trap here. If the 1-in-100-year flood happened this year, then we're safe for a while, right? It won't happen again for a long time ... maybe not even in our lifetimes.

This is what's known as the gambler's fallacy, and it gives us false hopes.

There's a widely-held misconception that a 1-in-100-year event will only happen once every 100 years (give or take a bit). But, of course, the 1-in-100-year concept really means that there is a 1% chance of a particular event occurring in any year. Whether or not the event happens in any one year does not influence the risk of it happening the following year. The river doesn't know that it has just flooded and shouldn't do so again for a while! There's always a 1% chance of flood (and apparently even the 1% is disputed and could actually be much higher). The risk doesn't change based on previous events.

Maybe it's time to re-think the way that we communicate disaster risk. Improving maths literacy would go a long way towards solving this problem. In the meantime, maybe we need to talk about the extent of disaster that we plan for (such as river height or cyclone severity), rather than the frequency with which the disaster is likely to occur.

Disaster warnings full of technical jargon

I learned on Background Briefing that the broadcast media are required to read out disaster warnings exactly as they are issued. The warnings may be accurate, but are they readily understandable for most people? Is it possible that, as Background Briefing suggested, the technical words of the disaster warning only further complicate an already complicated situation?

I remember thinking that Queensland's disaster warning system was impressive. But that was easy for me to think ... my house wasn't in the path of the flood or the cyclone. I didn't need to worry about whether a 17m flood would reach my driveway or my roof. It seems that many people were confused about the extent of the danger they faced.

The effectiveness of disaster warnings needs to be understood in context, and the best way to achieve this is to test them out with people. In Queensland, we have a real opportunity to test disaster warning scripts with people who remember experiencing them. Good qualitative research, conducted with people who directly experienced the disasters and with people who watched from the sidelines this time, could lead to enormous improvements in the way that disaster warnings are worded.

Calls for better community education

Background Briefing pointed out that every major disaster in Australia is followed by an enquiry and a report. And the report invariably calls for better community education about disaster preparedness. The interviewee on Background Briefing said that this call for community education is never followed through - that people don't learn more about how to respond to a disaster, and the collective public memory from each event is lost.

I'm aware of a few community education campaigns about disaster planning - for example, there's an ongoing tsunami awareness campaign in northern Australia, and there was a recent push for household disaster preparedness. Every year in Brisbane there's a campaign about storm preparedness.

Community education can always be improved, and this might be a good time to review what is being done and how it can be strengthened. Of course, people will only listen to the community education if they believe that the risk of disaster is real - a point directly relevant to the gambler's fallacy described above. And community education is only part of the mix - the '3 Es' of social marketing remind us that we also need to focus on engineering (changing design to lessen disaster impact) and enforcement.

Getting started

2011-02-25T13:05:00.000+10:00

February always seems like a good time to start new ventures. The year is still young, for me work is quite scarce, and there's time to think about doing new things.

Last February I launched The Writing Circle, a Brisbane-based network of workplace writing groups. We've got two groups meeting regularly to talk about ways to improve our workplace writing. And while I'm the facilitator of these groups, I'm finding that I learn an enormous amount from all of the participants. The groups have become a great way to be consciously conscious of how and why we write.

This February I've started using the Zing collaborative meeting software. I'm hoping that it will help me to facilitate collaborative, democratic meetings that help participants to create new knowledge. I used it last week in a workshop about Personally Controlled Electronic Health Records, and participants seemed to really enjoy the way that wireless keyboards had replaced the traditional workshop staple of butchers' paper. More information about Zing is available at http://www.infodesigncentre.com.au/?webpage=30 or at http://www.anyzing.com/.

And this February I'm also starting these occasional posts. I'm planning to write about clear communication - particularly plain writing and simple ideas. Of course, how much I write will depend a bit on how busy I become and how many interesting things I notice.