When you’re running an inclusive innovation project, you need to make sure you communicate with participants and stakeholders in an inclusive and accessible way.
This includes writing clearly and plainly so that as many people as possible can understand you. Clear, plain English is easier and better for:
- many neurodivergent users
- people who are not fluent in English
- low-literacy users
- people who can’t concentrate because they’re ill, or in a noisy place, or…
- everyone – it respects everybody’s time and situation
10 tips
- Write like you’d speak. Read your writing aloud. Do you sound dull and formal? If you do, try again!
- Use everyday vocabulary:
| Instead of | Try |
| Ensure | Make sure |
| However | But |
| Such as | Like |
| Collaborate | Work with |
| Queries | Questions |
| Utilize | Use |
- Get rid of waffle, like:
- Please note
- Please be aware
- Please do not hesitate to
- Write short sentences. They’re easier to read than long ones. And that’s good
Long sentences, especially ones with subclauses like this, can be harder for people to read, which is bad
For example:
This email is to acknowledge that we’ve received your query → We’ve got your email
- Multiple short paragraphs are better than one long paragraph. So change paragraphs whenever you finish a thought
- Put the important stuff first:
- At the start of a page
- At the start of each sentence
- In headings and links
- Use plenty of subheadings. They help people quickly scan and get to the things that are important to them
- Don’t ask lots of questions in your headings (they will mostly start with ‘W’ words like who, what, why and when, which makes it difficult to scan)
- Link text on web pages must always fully describe the target
- Use sentence case not title case for headings and subheadings. This means only capitalising the first word of a heading or subheading. Using capital letters for each word makes your headings much harder to read.