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.<\/p>\n
Second commandment:<\/p>\n
Present the main point at the beginning.<\/strong><\/p>\n Administrative documents used to start with history lessons. If the city council was about to decide on next year’s tax rate,\u00a0the related documents would begin with extensive background before revealing the proposed figure. Most readers would understand the details sooner if they knew from the start whether the motion\u00a0would be\u00a0for an increase, a decrease, or no change.<\/p>\n Jakob Nielsen’s expression “interaction cost” refers to how much work the user of a website has to do to achieve the purpose for which he came to the site. One way to lower the similar barrier\u00a0for a reader\u00a0is to write so that\u00a0the text\u00a0quickly answers the reader’s needs.<\/p>\n Administrative documents overwhelmingly\u00a0put the main point at the end. This longstanding pattern is often considered “correct” and “required,” despite its hampering the public’s ability to comprehend. Many who write this way even believe this stylistic tradition is legally required, when far too often it’s simply the way things have always been done.<\/p>\n The subjects in my research decided to change the order of the documents they were editing. They moved the main point to the beginning and the background to the end, in the same way we compose news articles and press releases.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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. Second commandment: Present the main point at the beginning. Administrative documents used to start with history lessons. If the city council was […]<\/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-3592","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\/3592","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=3592"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3592\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3600,"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3592\/revisions\/3600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}