I examined the usability of online texts in my dissertation. I sketched five recommendations for social media editors, based on my research and on my article, The City on Twitter. The five recommendations each appear as a Word of the Week.

Fifth recommendation:

Increase variation.

If you always compose updates automatically in the same manner, the human behind the writing fades away. At the same time, opportunities for interaction diminish. The most effective updates vary according to the situation and are linked to discussions.

In my research, the subjects wondered aloud about whether their updates would interest the readers, but  were afraid that a change in style might differ too much from the linked story. ”It would be nice to catch the reader’s interest, but I don’t want to promise too much… even though I’d like to write something sensational…” When writing updates, the subjects considered the reader’s viewpoint and the attractiveness of the post more than they would for other texts. An update should encourage reactions, either with likes, or with replies.

The updates my research examined ranged from formulaic to free form. Typical formats were headline tweets, tweets with examples, tweets directly addressing a person or group, and replies. Combining a headline with a link saves time for the writer, but does not encourage readers to interact. Often such tweets remain lonely cries and are not retweeted or shared.

You will also find headline and case updates on Facebook, but typically posts there are questions. Writers may use questions in successive updates, or pose several questions in the same post. In either case, a predictable format fails to bring the desired variation to social media communication.

I examined the usability of online texts in my dissertation. I sketched five recommendations for social media editors, based on my research and on my article, The City on Twitter. The five recommendations each appear as a Word of the Week.

Fourth recommendation:

Rephrase teasers.

It’s better to tailor updates individually to each social media channel. Facebook updates for a city are usually written by hand, but tweets are often generated automatically from the first part of the city’s online notices. Most such tweets parallel the information about events and news appearing on the city’s website. Content is shared automatically to the Twitter stream, where links in the tweet redirect traffic to the city’s website.

These short teasers work better if they are rewritten for their new use, not merely copied from another text channel. Updates should give readers an informative summary and not simply offer a link to click. Text that’s auto-copied from another item tends not to do well on its own.

An update copied from a headline or the first sentence of a news release fails to encourage discussion or to include interactive features. Its language is usually more formal than other social media communication, which favors more spoken language usage in the style of online chats. Rephrasing the content and adopting everyday language will make for a much more effective social media teaser.

I examined the usability of online texts in my dissertation. I sketched five recommendations for social media editors, based on my research and on my article, The City on Twitter. The five recommendations each appear as a Word of the Week.

Third recommendation:

Avoid special characters.

In Facebook updates, the channel does not require special characters and you can follow standard spelling. On Twitter, however,  you have to start usernames with @ (@HelsinkiAirport) and hashtags with # (#Finland), in which case they become links.

In Finnish, this causes problems, because words change their spelling based on their grammatical case. Usernames and hashtags typically use the nominative case. But if we need any of the fourteen other cases in Finnish, as in a sentence like “Send questions to @HelsinkiAirport”, we can’t use the proper Finnish case ending, or the word won’t become a link. As a result we find strange markings – the standard hashtag or username followed by something to represent the appropriate case: @HelsinkiAirport:lle, @HelsinkiAirport’ssa, @HelsinkiAirport n.

Spelling deviations decrease usability by breaking the rule of consistency. It’s easier to read text that follows standard spelling and grammar. On the other hand, user names and hashtags are important for interactivity and search. For usability and readability of tweets, it is better to avoid unnecessary deviations and aim for standard language by phrasing the tweets in a way that user names and hashtags are in basic forms. If it is too difficult, you can always use a zero-width space before a case suffix.

I examined the usability of online texts in my dissertation. I sketched five recommendations for social media editors, based on my research and on my article, The City on Twitter. The five recommendations each appear as a Word of the Week.

Second recommendation:

Use everyday language.

The readability of social media updates is often better than other online texts. My research subjects, when they edited documents for social media, favored shorter, more familiar and more concrete words. In updates, they talked about schools, libraries, children and pupils instead of services and actors. When updates were a direct part of discussion, they were even more readable.

Social media updates from city officials and experts usually follow standard language, but they tend to include more everyday expressions than other online texts dealing with the same subject. It appeared, for example, that the city of Espoo uses more colloquial vocabulary in its tweets than other cities. Espoo made this choice intentionally: it seeks the online forum style in the contrast to customary official writing.

I examined the usability of online texts in my dissertation. I sketched five recommendations for social media editors, based on my research and on my article, The City on Twitter. The five recommendations each appear as a Word of the Week.

First recommendation:

Increase interaction.

Social media is based on interaction. Characteristic features for interactive texts include personal pronouns, addresses, questions, answers and requests: ”Influence how and where you do your business” or ”Are we going get all services on our phones?”. Interactivity also shows up in the ways that the writer invites the recipient to take an interest in the text.

Traditional one-way communication for the public sector tends to move to social media. Twitter communication from cities, for example, consists mainly of headline-like announcements. Standard practice for online official communications greatly influences how they express interactivity. On government sites, writers will address the reader in the opening and in Q&A sections, but in the body of the text, based on traditional official document style, it’s rare to find anything that directly addresses the reader.

While cities strongly emphasize interactivity in their own social media guides, in practice communication is still mainly one-way. This is especially true on Twitter, even though interactive tweets get more reactions and have more effect. Sharing press releases fails to either support discussion or democratize participation.

According to my research, social media updates include more interactive language features than other online texts. The use of a familiar channel even seems to add interactive features to the updates. When it comes to social media in general, having a direct connection for discussion tends to increase an official’s readiness to engage with readers.

I am setting forth ten commandments for writers in the public sector, based on my dissertation and on standards for clear writing.

Tenth commandment:

Forget marketing.

Marketing talk reduces the credibility of texts, a serious drawback because credibility has always been a strength of official documents. According to the research, credibility also improves usability. You should not write a headline ”Tax rates getting lower” if they’re not. Similarly, don’t state that that services are improving when what’s really happening is that they’re being cut.

In my research, I found that positive marketing-style expressions move readily from one format, like a document, to others like online updates or social media. In Jakob Nielsen’s testing, however, this same marketing rhetoric lengthened the reading time – in other words, it degraded usability.

Objectivity and a non-advertising style are also recommended in the style guide for Finnish government services. This was the newest directive that I examined in my research. This principle of objectivity was clarified with examples: ”Avoid ad-like expressions (’Come and have fun in the library!’). Instead, describe the service and its use (’You can read the daily newspapers in the library.’).”

Recommendations like this show that the Finnish public sector is already escaping the clutches of marketing.

I am setting forth ten commandments for writers in the public sector, based on my dissertation and on standards for clear writing. The commandments will each appear as a Word of the Week.

Ninth commandment:

Avoid lists.

In government documents, using a list is a popular rhetorical device: ”We offer services for children, youngsters, adults and seniors.” In other words, something for everyone. By listing items this way, a writer creates an impression of full coverage, but at the same time he makes the text long and dull.

A mania for coverage is one reason for the prevalence of lists. In addition, this technique is a fast way to compose a text, especially if you approve of sentence fragments: “Permits, applications, appeals. Reviews, reports. All here for you.” And guidelines for online writing often recommend using lists and similar visual highlights.

Justification for listing may stem from a Jakob Nielsen recommendation. He maintains that one way to support the scanning of text is to include lists. However, his own examples usually consist of only a few items, and each item tends to have only a few words. It’s true that short lists with two or three words per item are easy to skim, but longer lists do not help readers in the same way. This guideline therefore needs some context: a list can help a reader skim if it contains 3 to 5 items, and the items are 3 to 5 words long. Try not to use too many lists in the same text, a practice that Nielsen also advises against.

I am setting forth ten commandments for writers in the public sector, based on my dissertation and on standards for clear writing. The commandments will each appear as a Word of the Week.

Eighth commandment:

Favor short words.

The most common Finnish words contain two to five letters and have one or two syllables. Therefore, when we use short words, we are likely also using familiar, everyday expressions.

By adopting the perspective of a typical resident, those who write for municipal bodies are likelier to choose more suitable and more easily understood words. My research subjects did this, especially in social media updates. Their updates contained substantially fewer long words compared to other genres of text.

This shorter-word standard has received criticism, but combined with other evaluation techniques, it’s a handy and useful method.

I am setting forth ten commandments for writers in the public sector, based on my dissertation and on standards for clear writing. The commandments will each appear as a Word of the Week.

Seventh commandment:

Contextualize – link the text to action.

Local residents don’t usually understand the city’s decision-making process well enough to recognize, from abbreviations or status codes in a document, the part of the process that the document deals with.

As with much official activity, such abbreviations and codes are shorthand for people who deal with these issues all the time. The typical resident, however, does not regularly follow city council agendas, meetings, or minutes. What brings them to such documents is interest in a specific situation, for example construction plans for their neighborhood. The resident’s experience is like what happens why you take a new device out of its box: ease of use is determined by first contact.

The challenge of context extends to the interpretation of all parts of the text. One helpful approach is linking. In an online text, it is possible to link to an overview of the entire process as well as to documents related to different phases. However, this demands good web editor skills to create clear hypertext.

For usability, Jakob Nielsen recommends deleting unnecessary introductions. Readers are impatient; they want to find the main point. Still, even Nielsen advises providing context, as long as you keep it concise.

I am setting forth ten commandments for writers in the public sector, based on my dissertation and on standards for clear writing. The commandments will each appear as a Word of the Week.

Sixth commandment:

Concretize – link concepts to perceptions.

Concrete things happen in a specific place at a specific time. It’s easier for a city resident to go to a dentist this week than to access oral and dental healthcare in the near future.

The person writing the original text should make its ideas concrete; it’s much harder for an editor to add examples and clarifications afterward. What’s more, research on the law writing process shows that experts find it difficult to accept additions or explanations added by others. All the more reason for the person writing the original text to use concrete language from the outset.

Concrete language by definition is more specific and more accurate. It’s easier for a resident to talk about Tampere City Hall or Palandar House than about “the city’s prestige buildings.” Abstract expressions like that leave room for interpretation, which easily leads to confusion or obscurity. In fact, abstract language often becomes a way to avoid specifics in politically difficult matters.