
Pleonastic prose?
Clear content, please!
Content Design is one of the key disciplines within Human-Centred Design.
Now, the discipline of Content Design isn’t just about writing words. It’s about much more than that. But, not a lot of us will storyboard videos, or construct infographics in our day-to-day roles.
We all write words though. Lots of them. Too many of them, in fact.
“I didn't have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead”
Digital industry is rampant with poor communication. Inboxes burst with long emails and bloated PowerPoints. Important messages are buried in walls of text. We make our recipients work too hard to understand what we need to tell them.
Our Content Design team reduces cognitive load for our users. We make web pages simple to read and understand by aiming for a reading age of 11.
Can we do better when communicating internally?
Lots of us are so busy we simply ‘fire and forget’ when writing. We dump what’s in our brains onto the screen, and then don’t read it back. We assume that because it makes sense to us, it will also make sense to our recipient.
It’s hard to subtract. It’s easier to add a few more words if we need to communicate better, right?
Fewer (not less) words
You can say a lot with only a few words. Take the famous example of a six-word story, often attributed to Ernest Hemingway.
For sale: Baby shoes, never worn.
Sure, we aren’t looking to write emotionally-stirring stories, but the sentiment here is that less is more.
Subtraction is well worth the effort.
Simple steps to help you communicate better
- Read what you’ve written before pressing send. Does it make sense? Could you say it better, with fewer words?
- Put space in your copy, No one wants to decipher a wall of text. The return key is your friend, and increase your line height.
- Use bullet points when you want to land key messages.
- Check the reading age of your text by using the Hemingway tool. We aim for Grade 6, but push for Grade 4.
- If you can’t reduce your copy, put a ‘too long, didn’t read’ sentence at the top. Wrap up the key takeaway in one sentence. It’s very effective.
This article has a read time of 1min 35sec, and a reading age of 9.