The Rights of the Reader, as plain and pictorial as it gets!

By Daniel Pennac, Illust. by Quentin Blake.

The other day I came across a link to this gem of a poster. It was linked from a well-known blog I follow called The Happiness Project, which mentioned the 1992 book of the same name (which I can’t wait to get my hands on as well!).

I love its simplicity and universal appeal — whether you’re a non-, weak, online, sometime, or voracious reader, you have these rights and likely recognize some of these behaviours in yourself.

And for those of us who make our living by communicating, I see this as a simple-yet-powerful communication tool: a Ten Commandments of Truths We Must Always Remember before we prepare something that we want (or need) people to read.

My 6.44 minutes of fame! CBC Radio interview about clear wireless contracts

Been off the blog for awhile, but appreciate the visits we’ve gotten lately (… and not all of them were SPAM).

Speaking of visits, I was on CBC Radio Sudbury last Friday via their phone interview with me about plain-language wireless contracts. Currently, the Ontario government is getting ready to put forth a bill demanding changes to bills and contracts for cellphones.

Got a few minutes and an interest in plain-language contracts?

> Have a listen!

New resource … “How’s this for a convincer?”

As part of SimplyRead’s contribution toward International Plain Language Day 2012, we created a short PowerPoint presentation: International Plain Language Day – Why it’s worth celebrating. It’s part of the ‘virtual celebration’ that continues beyond the 0fficial day this past October 13.

In it you’ll see examples that typify writing we see in business and everyday life, then After versions that demonstrate the value plain language adds. You’ll also get a few tips to help you design your information more clearly for readers.

Take a look, share it … use it however works to help people learn the value of plain language. Just make sure you use it as-is and say from whom and where you got it. (Yes, even we plain language people have disclaimers!)

And while you’re there, check out how much other impressive work is afoot to support clear communication around the world. Most of what you’ll find there was created recently – so you know it represents the the ‘latest and greatest’ on what plain language is, why it works, and who’s embracing it to improve their communications.

Gone fishin’ again … might it be decision fatigue?

How’s this for plain language?

The last time I had a blog in 2007, the final post was called Gone fishin’. I was done with that first iteration and decided not only to go fish … but also to jump ship. I wasn’t digging the blog tool I’d chosen, and my business was taking up more of my extra time.

This time ’round, I’m in a similar boat (along with using too many nautical metaphors).

Writing and editing is what I do for my work the rest of the time, and it’s taken on greater steam.

Fortunately, I get to spend even more time writing for clients now as SimplyRead continues to take on larger-scale plain-language projects. And I’m ramping up to get involved in prep for International Plain Language Day October 13. But it’s lately left precious little time for Messages (and for you, if you’re a regular follower).

My bulb’s burnt out

But the clincher has been health-related. Along with the normal stresses of managing a business and life with two young kids in the expanding suburbs, years of battling chronic food sensitivities have doused much of my already-flickering flame. In plain language: to balance out my energy, I need to do fewer things better, eat more meat and carve out more Me Time.

So I’m taking a break from this space for awhile. But I continue to find and and share new info and critical thinking about plain language, simpler processes and communications. You’ll find me on the SimplyRead facebook page and on our Twitter feed.

Can’t figure out what to have for dinner? Maybe it’s decision fatigue.

Before I run off, here’s something that’s grabbed and held my attention. It turns out that I’m not alone in my predicament. If you ask researchers Roy Baumeister and John Tierney, many of us struggle with what they call ‘decision fatigue’ when their lives get too demanding.

This problem stems from the number of decisions each of us is faced with in today’s more complex, information-soaked world. Here’s my version: Daughter asking “Mom, what’s for dinner tomorrow?” while I respond to a client’s text, seated in front of my bank’s log-in screen, while my toddler pulls on my shirt and the phone buzzes in the background. According to Baumeister and Tierney, the commonness of multi-tasking – and the self-denial that come with all that stress – greatly impact on our personal self-discipline and willpower.

Common life patterns can compromise our willpower – who knew?

As discussed at length in this New York Times article, it’s harder for people in our times to maintain healthy willpower and make good decisions. Choosing among so many options all the time just burns out our brains.

Those of us who operate without enough money are more susceptible to decision fatigue, since the number of times we have to decide between tempting options goes up.

Does your willpower swim wit’ da fishes at certain times of the day?

Similarly afflicted are people who spend their days in back-to-back meetings, only getting to catch up at the day’s end when their energy is sapped.

Worse, they’re probably hungry (or more often, ‘hangry!’). Baumeister and Tierney say the amount of glucose is another key factor in these capacities.

This sudden limit to our better  judgment is a good explanation for why people on diets often break them: People who have to deny themselves so many things will eventually find their resources for self-regulation severely depleted … and their heads in the freezer scoping out the Haagen Dazs.

It’s also blamed for all those times we’ve heard about the outstandingly successful person who blew it all on that one bad decision … (now take a second to remember the last one in the Financial Times or TMZ that you went all schadenfreude about …).

Now that alone is a good enough reason for my Serious Need To Chill. If all these other brilliant people have gone off the deep end, I’d better get my own house ship shape lest I end up in the same kettle of fish.*

Let’s stay connected!

Until we get our blogging mojo back, if you like what you’ve seen here you can still enjoy tweets, news, musings and more to help you ‘cut the churn’:

• Follow us on Twitter
• Like SimplyRead Communications Group on facebook

* I should probably work on some new metaphors too, huh?

Spot the mistake for a chance to win!

Our last few posts have looked at some of the ‘SPAM’ emails I’ve seen from people pretending to be a company or person I know, which intend to elicit my response so that the sender can then gather information from or otherwise try to take advantage of my naïve interest.

One of the tip-offs that these messages were fakes was that often they were riddled with spelling or grammar errors.

But even in large, legitimate organizations, mistakes happen. With so many people and interests involved, a few gaffes are bound to get missed.

Take the following example that recently crossed my desk:

Do you catch the mistake?

If, like me,  you’re just that type of smarty-pants who likes to notice other people’s grammar errors, this is your chance to shine! Tell us where you see a mistake in the above paragraph, and we’ll enter you into a prize draw. Just make sure you send us your answer by Friday, June 15. Heck, we’ll enter you even if you just surf around and leave a comment anywhere in the blog between now and that date (obvious spammers excluded).

The winner will get a copy of Lifting the Fog of Legalese: Essays on Plain Language (2005), by widely-published clear writing advocate Professor Joseph Kimble.

More SPAM shows why voice is a HUGE factor in effective writing

My Inbox and Twitter feeds keep serving up more fish.

Our last post dealt with bulk, unsolicited – i.e., SPAM – messages pretending to be from banks. Since then, I have come across an additional form of SPAM that is relevant to my interest in plain language: that which claims to be from individuals we know, and which comes to us ‘from’ them via their mail or Twitter account.

These new examples show that just because something’s plain, doesn’t mean we trust it. Other elements always come into play in how we receive the message.

A fish of a different odour…

Both messages resulted from someone hacking into those real people’s actual accounts, then pretending to be that person. So they looked to actually be from an individual I know, not a faceless sender in a large company.

Both are from colleagues in other cities: people I have not yet met in-person, but whom I know from years as fellow plain-language practitioners. I’ve written to both of these folks several times over the years, and participated with them on discussion groups. So, I know how they sound when they ‘talk’ online.

So when I saw the notes ‘from’ them this past week, I knew something was up. They were both clear, so no problem understanding them. They both used short words and a conversational tone. Again, totally plain language.

But what made me smell fish was the tone of voice and choice of words each of them used.

Message #1: The ‘help me get back home’ scam

The first, much longer message was ‘from’ one of them who lives about five hours away. Except it said she was out of the country, and that she had been mugged. She was writing me because, left with no way to get back home, she was hoping I would wire her some money … okay, you already see the commonality between this and other SPAM notices.

But before I even got to the request for money, I already sensed it was a bogus message. First, the context was all wrong. I’d only expect to get a longish message from this person if it was about our mutual work in our professional association. The other thing that tipped me off was the first line, which said ‘How are you doing today? I know this might surprise you, I apologize for not informing you about my travel to England for a Conference…’

Knowing this person in the professional capacity – and knowing her to be an excellent writer – I wouldn’t have expected her to sound like this. Clear and direct or not – I knew I couldn’t trust the message to be authentic; the first few lines sounded ‘canned.’

Message #2: The ‘someone’s saying stuff about you’ lure

The other message was shorter, and sent to me via Twitter. It was from an Australian colleague this time, one with whom I’ve corresponded over the past month or so. It was a direct message to me that said ‘Someone has been spreading rumors about you’ and gave a TinyUrl link.

Again, it looks like a normal tweet, and its meaning is crystal clear. But it still smells like fish. Again, the tone is all wrong for the context. (I was also surprised to see an Aussie spelling ‘rumor’ without a ‘u’ – but that’s a fiddly editor’s matter most normal readers might not notice.) So I did not click the link.

In both cases, even though the message had come directly from these people, I emailed both right away and learned that their email and Twitter accounts had indeed been hacked into.

The point of regurgitating even more SPAM (and of mixing canned meat with smelly fish metaphors) …?

Plain language writers sometimes need to counter the common perception that ‘plain language’ means a ‘dumbed down’ form of language that most people would find patronizing, because it boils the subtleties and beauty of language into monotonous-sounding, Dick and Jane-style narratives.

These two examples struck me in how they were so clear and direct – in fact, overly so – and it was because they didn’t fit with either the senders’ typical tone of voice or the context of my relationship with them that I knew they were fakes.

And similarly, our readers won’t trust what we write if it still does not sound authentic. And, if it doesn’t sound authentic, then it was not truly written with the reader’s needs in mind.

True plain language writing only does its job of communicating effectively if it also captures the human element with the right tone, context and choice of words. Thus, it embodies much more than short words and sentences.

Top 3 recent SPAM messages from fake banks

SPAM messages try hard to hook you ...

We’ve all gotten broadcast – or SPAM – messages from people claiming to be writing from a financial institution. Usually, they are of the URGENT variety, wanting us to, in a panic, respond instantly by clicking the link in the message and ‘correcting’ their personal information on a fake website pretending to belong to the bank.

(Really, they want the unwitting recipient to give them info about him or herself by going to the spammer’s website and entering their information.)

In arguing for why good writing is important to help a company seem credible and trustworthy, it’s often useful to look at the opposite of good writing – and SPAM messages are rife with this!

What’s interesting in the case of notices proporting to be from financial institutions is that it’s clear that the writers are using a voice that tries to sound very official and serious … just like they think a bank would sound. But the stand-out errors in them start to chip away at that vaneer pretty efficiently.

Even people who don’t edit people’s writing for a living will pick up on even minor gaffes and start to feel less invested in a message that was unsolicited to start with (and which may not even be from a bank we actually deal with).

To illustrate, here are three of the most odorous SPAM messages that have landed in my Inbox lately (well, of those I actually bothered to open and read …). Included are < my notes in carets > on just what makes them so pungent:

... but often the errors in them make them smell kind of fishy.

---

SPAM Message #1
This is an Alert to help manage your online banking access. < the alert is so important that they’ve capitalized it! >

Dear Bank Of Montreal customer < The bank must be important if they spell the word ‘of’ with a capital O >,

Bank Of Montreal Online Security has been receiving complaints from our customers for < complaints for? > unauthorised uses of Online Banking Accounts. As a result we are temporarily shutting down some selected Bank Of Montreal Online Accounts perceived vulnerable to this, pending till the time we carry out proper verification by the account owner < ‘pending till’? >. Bank Of Montreal is committed to ensure the safeguard of each customer personal information, making sure only authorised individuals have access to their accounts. <Whoa, you can tell this one was not written by an English speaker. >

As a first step to have Your < I must be divine, since they’ve used a capital Y >Bank Of Montreal Online Access reactivated please verify your identity by using the link provided below:

http://www.bmo.com/fraud.prevention/account/verification < This link actually takes you to one starting with ‘amourtoujours.net’ >

These instructions are sent to and should be followed by all Bank Of Montreal clients,to avoid service deactivation after the verification is completed < ‘are sent to and should be followed’ – nice use of the passive, and those nice mega-nouns ‘deactivation’ and ‘reactivation’ all in one sentence! >. We apologise for any inconveniences and thank you for your cooperation. . < Oops, they’ve left an extra period here! And don’t we spell it ‘apologize’ in Canada? >

Thank you,
Customers Support Service. <Well, they do support multiple people … >

---

SPAM Message #2

Dear Bank Of Montreal Customer:

BMO Bank Of Montreal is hereby announcing the New Security Upgrade. < Sound the trumpets! They’ve announced the Upgrade! >

We’ve upgraded our new SSL servers to serve our customers for a better and secure internet banking service < Was it not secure before …? >.

It is very important that you update your account information  & other personal information < I’m not sure I’d give any personal info to someone using an ampersand to preface it >, please follow the link below to  update your account then ‘Sign In’ to submit your request.

Click Here To Update Your Account < When you hover your mouse, it shows the URL:  <http://autozap99.ru/&#8230; >

100% Online Banking Guarantee < also links to a bogus URL >

Bank Of Montreal

Security Advisor

© 2011 offered by BMO Bank Of Montreal, N.A.

 < Well, it must be a professional message if they’ve copyrighted it! >

---

SPAM Message #3

From:             C.I.B.C. – Accounting Services [anna.van@cibc.com]

Subject:    CIBC Business Banking – Statement Summary Report – ’03/01/2012′

< Don’t they know how to spell their own name? >

DEAR CIBC BUSINESS BANKING CUSTOMER < Great, now they’re shouting at me. >

Kindly download the attachment to view your new account summary and confirm recent transactions on your account. < Nothing about why would I do this …?>

CIBC Financial Services < Wait, I thought the message was from Accounting Services. >

Customer Service

As this e-mail is an automated message, do not reply to this email.

————————————————–

No virus found in this message.

Checked by AVG – www.avg.com

Version: 2012.0.1901 / Virus Database: 2109/4742 – Release Date…

< Well, nice to know they’ve gone through the trouble of scanning this message before sending it. They must be trustworthy – look at all that technical info! >

---

So what’s my point?

We all have laughed about the awful SPAMs we’ve received. But they hold some very good lessons about how we can miss with our own customers if we’re not careful: with inconsistent spellings, bad punctuation, incomplete or uneven information, a tone and flow that  doesn’t sound natural . . . the list goes on.

It’s something to think about the next time you’re writing an important message on behalf of your business.

Disclaimer

While the above examples use the names of two major Canadian banks, I only leave them in because some of the errors have to do with using those brand names incorrectly or inconsistently.

Had those messages actually come from actual financial institutions (FIs), they would no doubt have been much better-written. And as fraud-prevention folks always say, a legitimate FI won’t contact its customers by broadcast email anyway.

Naked verbs mean plainer prose

Are your sentences too loaded? Try stripping your nouns!

A good chunk of my business over the past seven years has been with financial services organizations. As expected, in a highly regulated environment, people often tend toward a highly formal style of writing.

And it makes sense that people will believe that they need to use a more formal tone to align with the culture of the organization. Even when employees receive a lot of info and training to help them adopt a clearer, fresher tone as part of re-branding, it still takes awhile for the new behaviours – including using clear language – to fully sink in.

One tip that I always give to help people use a more direct, easier-to-understand tone is to strip your nouns.

Start stripping, baby!

If you want to give your documents a leg up in being clear, I suggest you strip your nouns – have ‘em let it all hang out. You’ll shake off a lot of clutter that weighs down your sentences, throws a ball and chain ’round the neck of your paragraphs.

What do I mean by ‘clutter’? I mean all the suffixes that get added to verbs, such as -ment, -ation (or -ization); and I mean verbs that have evolved into nouns over time.

I think we are drawn to them because we think that they make words sound more important or authoritative. When you were younger, do you recall having your teacher say you needed to turn in an 800-word essay, and worrying that you would never be able to fill up all that space with something intelligent?

If you do, then you probably used the following type of language to make your writing sound smarter:

• “This enables the achievement of our monthly objectives.”
• “We will assist in the attainment of those funds for the project.”
• “This team was key to the successful initiation and implementation of the new system.”

These words aren’t wrong in and of themselves. It’s only when people use nouns like achievement, attainment, initiation and implementation where the verb at the root of those words would have done just fine.

Why are verbs better? They engage readers more because they give a more concrete sense that some action is taking place, painting a clearer picture in someone’s mind.

Note as well that the above examples often need support from their two buddies, ‘of’ and ‘the’ – words that help you round out those word counts, but also make it take longer to express your thought. Not good when you’re trying to reach busy people who may still be trying to decide if they should continue to read your piece in the first place.

Witness a few ‘loaded’ examples typical of the financial services industry, along with how I would ‘strip’ them down to more direct, easy-to-grasp language:

Loaded: Any amount payable to a minor beneficiary during his/her minority

Stripped: Any amount a minor beneficiary receives during the time they are a minor.

Loaded: We will assure the retention of the funds in the above-named account.

Stripped: We will hold the funds in the above account.

Freed of noun clutter, your sentence more readily springs off the page.

Loaded: Payment of dividends to policyholders is made monthly.

Stripped: We pay dividends to policyholders monthly.

Noun clutter is everywhere

To be fair, writing in other businesses besides financial services has seen this noun-based language creep in, too. Here are more examples typical of information documents from other industries, along with my ‘stripped’ versions:

Loaded: Employees can achieve resolution of these issues through the application of the Human Resource employee dispute resolution policy.

Stripped: You can resolve these issues by following Human Resources’ Policy for Resolving Disputes.

Loaded: Nominees must demonstrate active advocacy to ensure the full and proper implementation and evaluation of identified solutions.

Stripped: Nominees must demonstrate that they will actively advocate to ensure that those responsible to implement and evaluate the solutions will fulfill their roles fully and properly. 

Loaded: The statement outlines recommendations for the safe discharge of patients.

Stripped: The statement outlines recommendations to professionals to help them safely discharge patients. (Note that this word does not need anything added to turn it into a noun!)

Loaded:  The committee is active in the identification, assessment and treatment of mental disorders.

Stripped: The committee works to identify, assess and treat mental disorders.
So next time you’re creating a communication, and aren’t sure why it doesn’t jump off the page, look for verbs that have been loaded up to create nouns – and see if you can strip ‘em down. You’ll be helping your reader grasp your message more quickly and easily.

Another set of instructions: This time, a goodie

Our last post showed one of the hall-of-fame worst sets of instructions I’ve seen, in terms of their design.

A few days later, I picked up a set that had quite the opposite effect. So it seems only fair to share a really good one, too, especially since it’s likely to be read by the same audience: parents of children ages 7+.

What makes these so helpful?

While they still come in a pretty small package, these ones

• are easy to read and navigate,  due to the clean typeface and large-enough type
• have clear visuals to help you picture what playing the game looks like, and
• use good subheads that help you recognize natural changes in topic, some of which contain more engaging calls to action (‘Let’s play,’ ‘You should have:’).

You can tell that this company takes the effort to ensure that their instructions make sense to befuddled parents like me, who can only get the straight dope on how to play without cheating if they read the instructions. You see, my daughter has her own version of some games, with rules that seem to evolve as she begins to fare worse in the game.

But then, you’ve got to watch out for those times she gets a hold of the instructions themselves. Despite how well-written this little booklet is, I’m still not completely sure I am playing correctly, since she’s clearly following in her mom’s editor footsteps … see for yourself:

Maybe she thought she was highlighting them?

Imagine reading this without glasses …

The instructions below came with an mp3 player my daughter received for Christmas.

Look at the words in relation to my hand. How close to your face do you think you’d need to hold this, to be able to read it?

I think this is 4-point type

The designers might be thinking that only people under 20 need to read instructions for these products. Or, maybe their priority was getting them to fit into the tiny package the player came in.

Either way, they’ve clearly forgotten that most of their customers are probably grandparents or parents of younger kids (who got the cheaper model ’cause they were worried the kids would break the higher-end one).