Welcome

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Introduction

Welcome to Plain English—Readers and readability. We all know we should be reader focused. But what does this mean, and how do you do it? In this course we will explain how to engage your readers with easy to read documents.

Learning objectives

After completing this course, you will be able to:

  • use the tools in Microsoft Word to test the readability of your documents
  • improve the readability of your documents
  • use an assertive tone to engage and persuade your readers.

Course outline

This course comprises nine lessons:

  • Reader expectations. We look at what your reader expects of your documents, and why readability is important.
  • Readability tools. Microsoft Office has some great tools to help test the readability of your document. We show you how to activate these tools so you can get readability information about your document.
  • Testing readability. We show you how to use the readability tools in Microsoft Word, and how to interpret the readability statistics.
  • Reader analysis. Different readers have different capacities for reading. We discuss how to analyse your readers so you can write to their level.
  • Special situations. Busy readers, technical topics and readers with special needs require careful attention. This lesson looks at their requirements and how to meet them.
  • Improving readability. Your reader should only have to read your document once to understand it. We show you a three-step process to make your documents easier to read.
  • Tone. As well as being easy to read, your reader expects an appropriate tone. We show you how to adjust the tone of your document and traps to avoid when doing this.
  • Assertive writing. We explain why you should use an assertive tone in work writing, and show you how to achieve it.
  • Persuasive writing. Persuasive writing needs more than logic and brute force argument. Persuasive writing is assertive and easy to process. In this section, we show you what persuasive writing looks like, and how to do it.

Most people take around three hours to complete this course.

Navigation

You can navigate between lessons by using the curriculum sidebar, or by clicking 'complete and continue' at the top of each page.

When you submit an activity, scroll up to find the 'view accuracy' button. This button will take you to another page where you can check your answers and get feedback. Close the feedback page or use the back button in your browser to return to the course.

Feedback

At the end of the course, we ask you to complete a learner feedback survey. Your feedback is important to us, and the survey is anonymous.

Comments and discussion

Most lessons have a section for comments and discussion. Use this space to ask questions and to share your experience. We can't promise to answer every question, but we will do our best.

Activity – reader expectations

We would like to hear your comments about reader expectations. What do your readers expect from work documents? You can use the activity below, but please share your thoughts in the comments section as well.

Complete and Continue  
Discussion

3 comments