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Writing Plain English Does Not Dumb Down Content

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The difficulty we face as a University web team is a fear that rewriting content for the web will somehow ‘dumb down’ the message.

 “If we write in ‘plain English’ we’re in danger of making ourselves look stupid. People won’t expect this from a university”

 

“We’re writing for our academic peers: they understand the terms we use.”

We hear these sorts of comments a lot. If you are writing for a website you need to dismiss them right now.

This is not the content YOU are looking for

Anyone can visit our website. We shouldn’t be excluding audiences based on their understanding of English. Who are we to decide who can or can’t access our ideas?

Think about those students or (high-quality) researchers who may not have English as their first language. Don’t make it hard for them to understand your content.

What about those with dyslexia or those using assistive technologies (like screen readers) to access the site?

And hey, what about you, wouldn’t you rather read something you understood at first glance (even if you are a specialist in that area)?

Remember:

No one will ever complain that you’ve made things too simple to understand.
Ann Handley

Plain English and why it’s important

Plain English at Newcastle University

In our Writing for the Web training we introduce the idea of using plain English. We encourage our content editors to:

  • write clear and direct content
  • be concise
  • reduce (or at least explain) jargon
  • use simple words in short sentences
  • use the language of your reader

All of these things make reading online easier for our audiences. They are how to write plain English.

Plain English Campaign

There’s a campaign for Plain English. The problems of complex words and long sentences are found in all sorts of sectors not just academic circles:

  • marketing
  • business
  • law
  • sciences
  • medicine
  • government

The Plain English Campaign highlights areas where their work has had particular success.

What we don’t want is to be a recipient of the Golden Bull Award  – each year the campaign highlights the worst written communication they’ve seen!

GOV.UK

The public face of government information has been transformed recently. GOV.UK is clear, well-written and helps people understand complex information. They are huge advocates of plain English.

They’ve published a blog post on using plain English:  “It’s not dumbing down, it’s opening up“.

Writing to support plain English

We’ve written lots of blog posts on improving content – most have hints about using plain English in them:

Resources and articles

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Team update: 12 – 25 November

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Go Mobile programme

Planning for phase 2 of Go Mobile is underway.

We’re recruiting for some new staff in the new year and planning an office move: this is all to help us complete the Go Mobile Programme.

There’s a lot to sort out so we’re getting ahead where we can.

There has been planning of sitemaps and requirements for the Alumni, Giving, International, Careers Service and Accommodation sites.

Undergraduate (UG) work continues. The majority of pages are nearing completion. We’re entering a period of proofing and checking.

Lisa has been finalising audits for the Business School and Careers websites, which will be going through the Go Mobile process early next year.

The Digital Institute site is now live!

Design and Technical developments

The tech team are ironing out some snags which arose during the development of the Phase 1 sites.

Catherine is working on documentation to outline some of the processes involved in importing and setting up new sites in T4.

Peter has been developing changes to the T4 UG template so we can export editable PDFs of content. This means that our outsourced proofing can all be handled online. As we work towards the deadline for go live, there have been technical changes to some of the UG specific T4 content types.

Andy has been collating the Phase 2 set of virtual tours to be converted for use on mobile devices. 28 additional tours have been identified and are in the process of being procured. There will also be updates to the virtual tour website.

Training and support

Interest in our training is increasing – sessions pre-Christmas are fully booked. We’ve a Planning and Writing Web Content sessions on the 26 November. Our new Media training is also going down well – we’ve two more sessions in December.

We’re now planning for training in phase 2 of Go Mobile and have sessions booked for the first two batches in 2016.

We’ve received 35 support requests through the NU Service Helpdesk and have resolved 20 of them.

Nielsen Norman Group UX Certification

Jane has successfully passed her exams for the Content Strategy (days 1 and 2) course run by Nielsen Norman. Well done Jane!

Campaigns and web developments

Emma C is on a roller coaster of love and hate with Google Analytics. She’s developing a model to help set objectives and measure the success of specific areas of the site.

Jane has been helping the Press Office get ready to promote some televised debates, due for broadcast on Channel NewsAsia in December.

We added some pages to the Faculty of Science, Agriculture and Engineering website to promote our 2016 Doctoral Training Awards.

Plans for the next few weeks

Lisa is writing this month’s newsletter for the blog.

Anne’s working on a Contribute webinar for staff at NUMed.

We are providing support for the next Research Impact campaign in the run up to the end of the year.

 

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Content Governance: People, Processes and Policies

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I’m not sure why I’ve drawn the short straw here: I get to introduce you all to the idea of content governance. Wait, don’t leave yet!

2005: we had websites with no direction

We only have to roll back about 10 years to see what our website was like with minimal governance. We had duplicated content all over the place. There were sites that didn’t follow our branding. We had a team of content-putter-uppers who just did but didn’t ask why.

What’s changed?

We still get asked to “just build a website” or “stick some content on this page”. But, nowadays, the answer is just as likely to be “no” as “yes”.

This is because we have content policies, style guides, training and the right people: our content governance.

Going mobile is helping us with content governance

We’re using the Go Mobile programme to reinforce the importance of governance. There are some elements to making it a success: people, lifecycle, style guides and training.

People

With each new project we’re making sure we have at least one named editor. This means we’ve got a person in post whose job it is to manage the website and its content.

We’re still not 100% there. Web editor roles are often part of another post at the University. We are getting some accountability. And we’re working on making sure content editors have enough time to edit.

Content life cycle

Each Go Mobile site development isn’t just a project with an end date. We’re planning reviews of site content to make sure we’re maintaining quality.

We’re working with editors to introduce content management tools. These include editorial calendars, analytics and Siteimprove.

Style guides

We’ve had a set of web content standards from day one. We’ve just not been good at letting people know about them or enforcing them.

Go Mobile is raising awareness not only that our standards exist but also of their importance. These are not rules for the sake of it. They’re there to help our site users access the content they need on all devices.

If content doesn’t meet our standards, we have the authority to say it doesn’t go live.

Training

We can’t write a style guide, leave it hidden in a cupboard somewhere and then moan if people don’t use it! So we’ve developed training to help communicate our standards. We’ve produced a demo site that presents our new content design in the context of our standards.

Beyond Go Mobile

Through Go Mobile, we’re developing a skilled group of content editors. They are responsible for our web content and will be ambassadors for maintaining quality websites.

We’ve bench-marked our sites. We know how well they score for readability and whether they follow our new standards.

We’re planning to review sites around 6-8 months after they’ve launched. This will help us make sure we’re maintaining quality.

Content governance covers much more than I’ve outlined here – if we can get this right though, we’re well on our way to managing our web content effectively.

Let us know in the comments how you keep on top of content quality. Do you have any formal content governance?

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Go Mobile: the Story So Far

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Our Go Mobile programme is up and running: 17, yes 17 (!) sites went live in September.

Phase 1 (our ‘beta/test/is this even possible’ phase) was a success. And because of this, we’re going to carry on and put the rest of our external-facing website through the programme.

Go mobile explained

Go Mobile is a project to make our website mobile responsive. This means it works on desktop computers as well as tablets and mobile phones.

But we’re not making things easy for ourselves. As well as adding a responsive design we’re also:

  • improving content – rewriting for mobile
  • updating assets – our new design needs higher quality images to support content
  • moving to a new content management system (TerminalFour – T4)

You can see some examples in action:

Oh no! Why have they changed everything?

Some of our feedback, particularly from University staff, has been unhappiness that we’ve changed or moved things. Remember we’re doing this for the greater good!

Our websites now work just as well on mobile as on huge desktop screens. Go Mobile is about improving access for all.

Key developments cover navigation, design and content

NAVIGATION

How you move through pages needs to be simpler and easier for mobile (smaller screens). Navigation is improved for those using desktops too. We’ve made sites shallower and removed redundant content.

DESIGN

Design enhances your website but doesn’t rule it. We’re always thinking about what our users want from the web content. For example, we’ve made sure that images are impactful and support our messages. But we’ve made sure that our template prioritises for you: on mobile, images shrink and drop under content.

Content

Text for mobile is written in short, easy to read paragraphs.  This helps when it’s stacked for smaller mobile screens.

We’ve also introduced styles like the introduction which helps to focus the point of the content on the web page. It’s allowed us to firm up our content standards. A paragraph should be around 20 words because this works better on mobile.

Even though this is part of writing for the web/writing for mobile, a lot of our changes are just about good writing generally.

So, how did we do it?

By magic of course! Well actually, a whole lot of design, technical and word wizardry.

We worked closely with colleagues in our IT Service (NUIT) as well as those in schools, faculties and central services.

We developed a brand new suite of training for our web editors. This covers editing in the new system, writing for the web, defining site objectives and using media (images and videos). We also introduced various tools to help you evaluate and improve content.

Find out what our web editors thought of the Go Mobile process.

Next steps

There are exciting times ahead. We’re turning attention to Phase 2. This is where we take the rest of the external website through Go Mobile. We’re planning to do this between January and December 2016.

It’s going to mean a lot of change for the team:

  • Agile ways of working
  • focused, time-bound project cycles to get through all the sites
  • extra staff
  • new office space

It’s going to mean a lot of commitment from our faculties and services. We need staff dedicated to developing their websites working with us and giving time for training on writing best practice and the new content management system.

We’d love to hear your comments on what we’re doing. Either comment here or use our feedback form.

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Team Update: 3 -16 September

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Welcome back! September is shaping up to be quite busy.

We’ve got our shiny new ‘back to school’ pencil cases with us and we’re not afraid to use them.

Go Mobile programme

The Go Mobile programme is finally in its launch phase for the first batch of sites.

Proofreading

There’s a lot of proofreading going on: we’re making sure our sites are following our new content guidelines. View our Go Mobile demo site or the University content standards (University login required) to find out more.

The whole team have been involved with proofing:

    • School of Biology
    • Newcastle Law School
    • School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape
    • Institute for Social Renewal
    • Institute for Cell and Molecular Sciences
    • Institute for Sustainability
    • Institute of Neuroscience
    • Study

Emma C and the editors for Athena SWAN have been putting the finishing touches to the new About the University pages.

Sites go live

Fanfare!

We’re really proud of the sites – go and have a look at them and let us know what you think in the comments below.

The next group of sites to go live includes the Institute for Cell and Molecular Sciences, Institute for Sustainability and Institute of Neuroscience.

Guest posts on what Go Mobile is like for editors

We’ve published two guest posts from Go Mobile editors so you can get their perspective of working on the programme. Read what Fiona Simmons (Social Renewal) and Ivan Lazarov (Press Office) had to say.

Next phase for Go Mobile

Gareth attended Executive Board on the 15 September to provide an update on progress and raise awareness and support for the next phase.

 Design and Technical developments

The tech team have finished building components needed for the Go Mobile template. We are busy re-importing some content like staff, news and events into T4 to make sure it’s all up to date before the sites go live.

The Press Office needs some bespoke content types setting up to manage the news and expert profiles. We’ve got the design and we’re nearly there with the CMS build.

Training and support

We’ve received 26 support requests through the NU Service Helpdesk and have resolved 15 of them.

We’re developing some training and guidance around the new image dimensions in the Go Mobile template.

Details are already available on our Go Mobile demo site but as images have to be much higher quality for a smaller screen (counter intuitive I know), we felt that running a short session would help editors get up to speed. We’ll be in touch once dates are firmed up.

Campaigns and web developments

Steve has developed new pages for the recruitment of Student Ambassadors, Student Mentors and Street Scientists.

Catherine has been working on a website for a newly formed partnership between Newcastle University and our local NHS Trusts. The new site will be launched at the end of September. Find out about Newcastle Academic Health Partners.

Emma B has been working on webpages in the School of Arts and Cultures site for the newly formed Media, Culture, Heritage subject area, which has been created due to the merging of ICCHS and MACS.

Plans for the next few weeks

Make lots of sites live! By the next installment we’ll be approaching the finish line for the first phase of the project.

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