Last week, Kielikello<\/i> magazine reported on a language survey targeted at Finnish municipalities. According to the respondents, the most significant factors complicating the work of government writers are the lack of time (78% of respondents), standard practices (69%) and lack of skill ( 54%). 58% of respondents believe that the quality of documents will improve if they are targeted to citizens, but only 12% of the respondents rely on user feedback. I suspect that the results mainly reflect the prevailing modus operandi: feedback is not currently used as part of the usability evaluation of texts. User feedback, however, is a great development tool, one that Kela, the Social Insurance Institution of Finland,is applying as it works to improve its forms.<\/p>\n
Another article in the same magazine upheld The Action Plan for Plain Language<\/a>. “For those who are eager to reform official language through social media and on the Internet, the action plan may be a disappointment.”Kielikello<\/i> contends that while social media can be used, “we also need expert knowledge.” Unfortunately, this view reflects a superficial understanding of online communication. The whole idea is that an expert can create understandable, everyday language on difficult issues through interaction with citizens. Blogs and discussion forums<\/a> are good tools for that.<\/p>\n Standard practice is sometimes a barrier blocking a better route.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last week, Kielikello magazine reported on a language survey targeted at Finnish municipalities. According to the respondents, the most significant factors complicating the work of government writers are the lack of time (78% of respondents), standard practices (69%) and lack of skill ( 54%). 58% of respondents believe that the quality of documents will improve […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14,15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1553","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-english-en","7":"category-wordoftheweek-en","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1553"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1553\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1554,"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1553\/revisions\/1554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}