Although Finns have the highest literacy rate in the world, research reveals that as many as 500 000 Finnish adults are in the two lowest levels of literacy on a five-point scale. People with poor reading skills risk falling further behind in society; participating as a citizen, or even applying for social benefits, requires the ability to read instructions and complete forms. Facing such barriers, a poor reader can miss the opportunity to apply for aid that would help break through the barrier of marginalization. What’s the solution? Both poor readers and competent ones can benefit from the use of plain language in the public sector. Indeed, important public issues should be communicated through plain language efforts. The first step in making a public document truly public is to make it more inviting to the reader; a lower threshold for comprehension improves the experience for the average citizen. A short document is easier to understand than a lengthy one; familiar words foster understand and create inclusion; clear images illustrate and support the core content. For more detailed help with plain language, see this vocabulary and a useful 5-step checklist. Don’t be shy; simple language never hurt anyone.

The annual Applied Linguistics Symposium took place last weekend at the University of Tampere. The theme was “Language awareness in an increasingly unequal society”. Keynote speaker Ulla Tiililä spoke about reasons for unequal access to government services. Government agencies nowadays are text factories; their main activity is the creation of new policies, plans and documents. For example, the new Finnish health care and social welfare law mentions 40 different kinds of documents: welfare report, cooperation agreement, service promise and so on. The effort to produce all these documents consumes so many staff resources that there is no time for meeting the customer. For example, studies show that many problems related to social services and healthcare stem from how agencies interact with their clients, but little money goes to improving such interaction. Finland’s public sector has spent over 2 billion euros on IT systems, but agency decisions are still based on standardized wording which officials can’t even edit. The main reason for the foolish policy is an inadequate understanding of language and communication. According to Ulla Tiililä “narrow language awareness has evil consequences and an expensive price tag.”

The tone of a message often affects us unconsciously. We respond positively to a friendly email, and negatively to a harsh one. The ability to control and change tone is a demanding task even for an advanced writer. Tone sneaks into a new text from previous messages or existing documents: we like to speak about issues with the same tone as before. Government documents, for example, favor a formal and distant tone, which is often considered to be the proper or official way of speaking.

How do we react to organizations based on tone? The Nielsen Norman Group looked at how a change in tone on a website affected a visitor’s impression of the organization. They varied the tone in four dimensions: funny to serious, casual to informal, irreverent to respectful, and enthusiastic to matter-of fact. According to the study, an organization’s image improved most with a casual, conversational, and moderately enthusiastic tone.

If we want to improve the image of government, we should evaluate official documents on the basis of their tone of voice.

The Tampere city council meeting doesn’t often get the attention it did last Monday. Via its @tamperelive account on Twitter, the city provided live monitoring of a meeting about the introduction of tram service. The result was 2 226 tweets with the #trevaltuusto (“Tampere Council”) hashtag, and 849 with #ratikka (“tram”). Beyond Twitter, the meeting was live-streamed and attracted 24 232 viewers.

Live reporting from a public meeting can be a great thing. It condenses the core content and shares ideas about the issues in manageable doses. Typically, documents for such meetings are hard for citizens to read, while agendas and minutes hew to traditional modes of presentation. Success in reporting via Twitter does require some new ways of thinking: you aren’t going to get the best results by quoting everything each speaker says. Live-tweeting is a summary and not a transcript. Such tweets should convey meaningful content like new arguments, explanations, or points of views. There’s little value in simply mentioning everyone’s name.

Live-tweeting, and the ability to follow a real-time meeting online, are likely to stimulate interest in policy, which is a good thing. Sadly, political games are likely to frustrate that interest: after hours of discussion and debate, the decision on a tram system was postponed to the next meeting.

During a trip to Oulu, I made a quick stop in Stockmann’s department store to buy something warm. At the escalator I encountered not just a choice but a puzzle. According to the sign, the first floor offered women’s wear while the second floor features women’s fashion. I asked other customers what the difference was, but none of them knew for sure. So I asked a salesperson. Her interpretation: “women’s wear” includes accessories like scarves and gloves, while “women’s fashion” focuses on clothing.

Retail signage has the same problem as web page menus. How do you label things so that users make the right choices for themselves? It’s all about usability: how quickly and accurately users are able to find what they want or do what they need to. So the general rule is to use everyday, concrete words for menus, labels, and similar guides.

How do we know which words to use? Usability researcher Jakob Nielsen suggests a kind of card game for research. Write your content items on cards. Have a small group of non-experts sort the cards into piles and then give a name to each pile. This tells you how people naturally understand relationships as well as the names they uses for categories.

If Stockmann’s had done this, they’d have found out that at least for me, “women’s wear” includes both scarves and sweaters, whether they’re “fashion” or not.

Spelling in advertising is often nonstandard, and deliberately so. Unusual spelling is a way for brands to attract attention—though sometimes it just seems like poor skill at spelling. You also have energetic guardians of branding who patrol the marketplace trying to make sure no one imposes unwanted rules on a corporate or product name. These watchdogs try to enforce practices like:

– Insisting on a hyphen (as in Jell-o), or on its absence.
– Writing a compound word as two words (Bar Keeper’s Friend.
– Mixing upper and lower case (HarperCollins, MasterCard).
– Skipping an initial capital letter (iPhone).
– Using punctuation or special characters (E.ON, Yum!).
– Spelling with all caps (IKEA).

In Finnish, brand practice can violate the standard rules of our language. For example, we change word endings based on their role in a sentence. We’d write “IKEAssa, IKEAsta, IKEAan” for “in IKEA, from IKEA, to IKEA,” but the company’s brand guidelines say its name should not be inflected in this way.

We’re at the point where being nonstandard is becoming standard. Maybe clever marketers will try to stand out by following the rules.

You run into all kinds of problems when popularizing officialese. One such challenge stems from the fact that much official writing is based on the law. Such texts frequently follow the same presentation mode as the law itself. A common method is to divide instructions or explanations into sections, complete with the section symbol ( § ). Why should you avoid this? Average readers will feel this legal format distant and difficult to read. Specialized symbols and markings [ like § 1.401(a)(4)-1 ] create that distance; readers don’t see the symbols, or the excessive attention to multilevel numbering, in other kinds of writing. In everyday prose, writers may use chapter numbers, but also include standard numbering, headings and subheadings, or simply paragraphing. All these are tools to organize the content in a way that’s accessible to the reader. Could it be that the use of section symbols and other official hieroglyphics is not so much for sequence or organization, but to emphasize the authority of the law? Asserting that authority often contradicts any desire to increase readability and comprehension. If we want our audience to read, understand and follow official instructions, we shouldn’t start by marking boundaries with section symbols.

Last week, the the hot topic in Finnish Twitter has been #digitalistgate. The discussion in short went like this: in his tweet, Antti K. called stuff shared with #digitalist hashtag as nonsense articles. Viille T. who is hosting the hashtag replied with underrating “you are some wordpress star from nowhere”, “with your 300 followers” and “you seem to be quite simple.” Verbal cross word might have ended here, unless Ville T. threatened to call to Antti K’s boss. The consultant’s communication seemed completely out of control, even though he is supposed to be a professional. What went wrong?

The net was supposed to democratize the debate. Now we know that is not necessarily the case. However, we must at least try to take on an equal attitude towards debaters. The claims should be refuted with arguments not on grounds of person or amount of followers.

Marketing and brand building has long been a increasing nuisance on Twitter. It seems that behind this particular gate is also a heavy brand guarding. Fortunately, Twitter conversations and hashtags can not be private property.

On the other hand, in social media you shouldn’t be oversensitive. Not everyone will see things from the same point of view or take you as seriously as you self. Criticism comes, and some comments should just be ignored. In this case, though, the online expert just keeps digging away. It”s a grave mistake.

On Saturday, nonfiction writers again filled the hall at Helsinki’s House of Science to discuss and reflect on their social media presence. Tuija Aaltostarted things off by asking the writers to think about the outcomes they wanted from social media: effective marketing, greater book sales, increased networking or something else? After defining the goal, it is easier to choose the appropriate channels. Elina Lappalainen, who won a Tieto-Finlandia Prize a couple of years ago, dropped by to tell her own social media story. Even as she starts writing a new book, she’s already planning social media activities for it. During the writing process, she picks up images and stories that she can share later. She publishes these items bit by bit, increasing the pace as the book comes out. Lappalainen has also experimented with paid advertising on Facebook and Twitter: spending 100 euros led to 25 deals. In my presentation, I focused on Twitter; I think it is the most useful social media tool for experts and nonfiction writers. Throughout the seminar it was clear that while the speakers had diverse attitudes towards marketing, no one wanted to restrict social media only to advertising. Success for a writer requires more: an authentic presence and versatile content sharing.