Plain Language and Respectable Web Writing

The Plain Writing Act of 2010 requires federal agencies to write, “Clear government communication that the public can understand and use.” This aligns perfectly with good web writing. With the upcoming July 13, 2011 deadline for the first round of improvements, it’s a good time to address my favorite federal web writing, “Bad Habit.”

First, let’s go through the Act.

The July 13 deadline requires each federal agency:
• Designate a senior official for “plain writing”
• Explain the Act’s requirements to staff
• Establish a procedure to oversee the implementation of the Act within the agency
• Train agency staff in plain writing
• Designate staff as points of contact for the agency plain writing web page
• Post its compliance plan for meeting the requirements of the Act on its plain language web page

These requirements are setting the stage for the larger October 13, 2011 deadline, which requires each federal agency:
• Use plain language in any document that:
o Is necessary for obtaining any federal government benefit or service or filing taxes
o Provides information about an federal government benefit or service, or
o Explains to the public how to comply with a requirement that the federal government administers or enforces
• Write annual compliance reports and post these reports on its plain language web page

The requirements are clearly written in order to help with implementation. We should be seeing plenty of activity in the next three or so months on federal websites as the Act is implemented.

So my favorite “Bad Habit” is using the word “Pursuant.” Pursuant is defined as, “in accordance with the law.” It’s a horrible lead to a web page. The introduction paragraph of any web page should be a concise summary of the contents of the page with a focus to the end-user. It should identify the user’s top tasks and describe your agency’s key activities. That said, citing public law probably isn’t top of your list.

However, we aren’t tossing out the use public law references. Add a section or sub-page with your laws and regulations to allow the user to read or ignore them as they wish. Citation is important, but should not be the lead to your web page.

In fact, we could drop pursuant for “in reference to” and improve the readability of our web pages. Microsoft Word has a feature you can turn on to access readability statistics on your text. Shorter sentence structure, active voice and words with fewer syllables are easier to read than complicated, dense web copy. Test your document’s readability - Word - Office.com

There are also free online tools that you can use:
• Tests Document Readability
• Readability index calculator

How did this post score? Using Word, I get a grade level score of 7.9.

Learn More
www.plainlanguage.gov