Deborah Bosley, Ph.D. is Founder of The Plain Language Group, LLC. and an international expert in plain language. She helps companies and universities increase trust and make content clear. Deborah has worked with the Office of the President for the University of California for several years as well as UNC Charlotte, and others.
Deborah has also written about the lack of clarity in higher ed content for Inside Higher Ed and The Atlantic. She has been interviewed by Investment News, The Wall Street Journal Morning Radio, Time Magazine, and Employee Benefit News, among others.
Needless to say, Deborah is an expert in this topic. This is a summary of the original higher education webinar on plain language that she presented, explaining how universities can create policies, disclosures and other non-marketing content that is easy for students, faculty and the public to understand.
Deborah was also a tenure professor for 25 years so not only does she know the topic of plain language but she understands the overcomplexity that occurs in higher ed environments in the US, and elsewhere. It’s a system bound by tradition and ‘this is the way we’ve always done it,' piling new information into old systems and existing documents.
Policy statements from universities often are walls of text, using long words, a high reading level, and lists separated with semicolons (rather than bullet points). The writer expects the reader to do all of the work. How does it make you feel? People do read with their emotions. We are having emotional reactions to everything we read. We can feel confused or annoyed at text that isn’t immediately easy to read.
Here is the agenda for the webinar, and what we'll cover in the summary:
Plain language is the use of proven writing and designing strategies that make it easy for the intended audience to find, understand, and use content. To pick out two keywords from this definition would be:
People want to find the info quickly, understand it and then use it. The three Cs at the heart of plain language are:
Let’s all agree that it’s difficult to be simple. Plain language is not:
There's empirical evidence that plain language helps to build your brand and:
How do we think about branding? What is the human response to a brand itself? It can make us feel angry or annoyed, ‘meh’ indifferent or it can make us advocates and happy to be associated with that brand. As we said earlier, we read with our emotions.
Every piece of content and communication to your intended audience is your brand. Deborah has actually written an article on this for our blog. Every interaction that a student or the public or faculty or staff or administrators have with their own university either attracts or detracts from your brand.
Universities need to have core values and show ethical behaviour; integrity and trust, leadership, value etc. The kinds of content that shows this is things like privacy policies, terms and conditions, employee benefits etc - so not just the obvious stuff.
There are generally four key intended audiences for higher education:
Policies or statements that are vague or use words that students don’t understand are failing those students.
Here are some common higher ed documents that are traditionally full of jargon, but should really be written in plain, easy to understand language:
Managing these documents is about people, processes and technology. And often, universities change technology vendors a lot, meaning there's always a whole new set of technologies that faculty, staff and students need to understand and learn how to use.
An analysis by The Plain Language Group of documents coming out of universities found:
This is a long list! It's important to not get caught up in trying to sound smart, and focus on user and reader needs. It’s important to try and get across a friendly personality through writing (which might not come out in traditionally dry syllabus material). It’s important to be and to be encouraging to students and advocating for students to be better, rather than just a set of rules on how they could fail.
This is also relevant when you’re sending emails. It’s important to use a clear, attractive subject line and headings and subheadings, and organise information in the way best suited to the audience and in a way that is not too taxing for your audience. If you’re giving instructions, make sure it is crystal clear. When people come to find information, if it looks easy they are more likely to read it. It sounds obvious, but so many institutions get this wrong.
There are lots of things you can be doing to transform your documentation into easy to read, digestible, plain language formats. Some examples are:
Some application documents are 80 pages long, and so many students don't go to college because they can't’ fill out application and other documentations. This is a serious problem and it isn't doing any good for the brand of universities and for parents and students. And then some research guidelines and policies for faculty members and staff are equally dense, unattractive difficult to follow and understand - some using things like double negatives.
Often, really important information gets lost in dense documents, which is no good for anyone. The Plain Language Group have cleaned up and done a rewrite of some of these types of documents to make them easier to skim and scan, which are given as examples and deconstructed in the full webinar.
In the US, there are a lot of regulations that universities need to be aware of and follow. These start with federal and state laws, then you go to university-wide policies, operational policies, faculty, staff and student handbooks. Then you go down into divisions and departments etc etc.
There are lots of regulations that require plain language. Some of these are:
You want your policies and procedures to be consistent, and look the same across different departments, so people are used to what they look like and readers build a framework to read and go through these policies. A good starting point for this is to get a style guide, and make sure people follow it.
Revisions of documents is never over; it's an ongoing process. Deborah uses lots of examples and deconstructions of policy documents in the full webinar, and shows how The Plain Language Group helped to make these more user-friendly, understandable and easy to digest. Also check out plain language government guidelines.
Creating content is all about people, processes and technology. To find out how GatherContent can help higher ed with their content creation, management and delivery, with style guides and templates embedded into the editing environment, go to our higher education industry page. GatherContent helps organisations with productivity, quality and compliance in their content.
Deborah Bosley, Ph.D. is Founder of The Plain Language Group, LLC. and an international expert in plain language. She helps companies and universities increase trust and make content clear. Deborah has worked with the Office of the President for the University of California for several years as well as UNC Charlotte, and others.
Deborah has also written about the lack of clarity in higher ed content for Inside Higher Ed and The Atlantic. She has been interviewed by Investment News, The Wall Street Journal Morning Radio, Time Magazine, and Employee Benefit News, among others.
Needless to say, Deborah is an expert in this topic. This is a summary of the original higher education webinar on plain language that she presented, explaining how universities can create policies, disclosures and other non-marketing content that is easy for students, faculty and the public to understand.
Deborah was also a tenure professor for 25 years so not only does she know the topic of plain language but she understands the overcomplexity that occurs in higher ed environments in the US, and elsewhere. It’s a system bound by tradition and ‘this is the way we’ve always done it,' piling new information into old systems and existing documents.
Policy statements from universities often are walls of text, using long words, a high reading level, and lists separated with semicolons (rather than bullet points). The writer expects the reader to do all of the work. How does it make you feel? People do read with their emotions. We are having emotional reactions to everything we read. We can feel confused or annoyed at text that isn’t immediately easy to read.
Here is the agenda for the webinar, and what we'll cover in the summary:
Plain language is the use of proven writing and designing strategies that make it easy for the intended audience to find, understand, and use content. To pick out two keywords from this definition would be:
People want to find the info quickly, understand it and then use it. The three Cs at the heart of plain language are:
Let’s all agree that it’s difficult to be simple. Plain language is not:
There's empirical evidence that plain language helps to build your brand and:
How do we think about branding? What is the human response to a brand itself? It can make us feel angry or annoyed, ‘meh’ indifferent or it can make us advocates and happy to be associated with that brand. As we said earlier, we read with our emotions.
Every piece of content and communication to your intended audience is your brand. Deborah has actually written an article on this for our blog. Every interaction that a student or the public or faculty or staff or administrators have with their own university either attracts or detracts from your brand.
Universities need to have core values and show ethical behaviour; integrity and trust, leadership, value etc. The kinds of content that shows this is things like privacy policies, terms and conditions, employee benefits etc - so not just the obvious stuff.
There are generally four key intended audiences for higher education:
Policies or statements that are vague or use words that students don’t understand are failing those students.
Here are some common higher ed documents that are traditionally full of jargon, but should really be written in plain, easy to understand language:
Managing these documents is about people, processes and technology. And often, universities change technology vendors a lot, meaning there's always a whole new set of technologies that faculty, staff and students need to understand and learn how to use.
An analysis by The Plain Language Group of documents coming out of universities found:
This is a long list! It's important to not get caught up in trying to sound smart, and focus on user and reader needs. It’s important to try and get across a friendly personality through writing (which might not come out in traditionally dry syllabus material). It’s important to be and to be encouraging to students and advocating for students to be better, rather than just a set of rules on how they could fail.
This is also relevant when you’re sending emails. It’s important to use a clear, attractive subject line and headings and subheadings, and organise information in the way best suited to the audience and in a way that is not too taxing for your audience. If you’re giving instructions, make sure it is crystal clear. When people come to find information, if it looks easy they are more likely to read it. It sounds obvious, but so many institutions get this wrong.
There are lots of things you can be doing to transform your documentation into easy to read, digestible, plain language formats. Some examples are:
Some application documents are 80 pages long, and so many students don't go to college because they can't’ fill out application and other documentations. This is a serious problem and it isn't doing any good for the brand of universities and for parents and students. And then some research guidelines and policies for faculty members and staff are equally dense, unattractive difficult to follow and understand - some using things like double negatives.
Often, really important information gets lost in dense documents, which is no good for anyone. The Plain Language Group have cleaned up and done a rewrite of some of these types of documents to make them easier to skim and scan, which are given as examples and deconstructed in the full webinar.
In the US, there are a lot of regulations that universities need to be aware of and follow. These start with federal and state laws, then you go to university-wide policies, operational policies, faculty, staff and student handbooks. Then you go down into divisions and departments etc etc.
There are lots of regulations that require plain language. Some of these are:
You want your policies and procedures to be consistent, and look the same across different departments, so people are used to what they look like and readers build a framework to read and go through these policies. A good starting point for this is to get a style guide, and make sure people follow it.
Revisions of documents is never over; it's an ongoing process. Deborah uses lots of examples and deconstructions of policy documents in the full webinar, and shows how The Plain Language Group helped to make these more user-friendly, understandable and easy to digest. Also check out plain language government guidelines.
Creating content is all about people, processes and technology. To find out how GatherContent can help higher ed with their content creation, management and delivery, with style guides and templates embedded into the editing environment, go to our higher education industry page. GatherContent helps organisations with productivity, quality and compliance in their content.
Paige is an English Literature and Media graduate from Newcastle University, and over the last three years has built up a career in SEO-driven copywriting for tech companies. She has written for Microsoft, Symantec and LinkedIn, as well as other SaaS companies and IT consulting firms. With an audience-focused approach to content, Paige handles the lifecycle from creation through to measurement, supporting businesses with their content operations.