10 Top Tipsto make your documents modern,

customer-friendly and

easy to read.

#writereallife

1. Keep sentences shortAim for a 20 words max for most sentences.

But vary it to keep things interesting.

Short ones are great for emphasising a point.

2. Be personalUse I, we, us and you.

Don’t use the company, the organisation, the association.

Thank you for your email. I am pleased to tell you that .....

3. Make no more than 2 or 3 points per sentence

Any more and your reader will be lucky to remember more than one of them.

zzz

4. Don’t use unnecessary

words or phrases

Stick to the point.

If you waffle on and use lots of words, your meaning will be lost.

And people will soon get bored and stop reading.

5. Don’t use legal-sounding language

It scares people.

They don’t know what it means - which makes them feel humiliated.

And it sounds like you’re telling them off.

6. Use familiar, modern,

everyday languageOld-fashioned language sounds pompous, officious and silly.

A lot of your readers won’t understand it because it isn’t part of their life.

There is always a modern alternative you can use.

7. Don’t use jargon that your readers

won’t understand

But do use jargon if you know your reader will understand it.

Between people who speak the same professional language, jargon is an efficient way to communicate.

8. Go easy on underlining,

capitals and italics

These are fine for just a few words, but more will be hard to read - especially for people with even slight visual impairments.

Underlining cuts the bottoms off words, capitals take away their shape, and italics are scribbly.

9. Don’t justify your type

Justified type creates rivers of space that distract from your words.

The eye keeps losing its place in the document and people often read the same line over and over again.

The reader can be so busy trying to remember where they are that your meaning gets lost.

10. Write the date in full, not innumbers

Not all countries and cultures put the day before the month.

So if you invite someone to a party on 7/6, don’t be surprised if they turn up on 6/7.

© Sandra Barber

#writereallife