I am setting forth ten commandments for writers in the public sector, based on my dissertation and on standards for clear writing.<\/p>\n
Tenth commandment:<\/p>\n
Forget marketing<\/strong>.<\/p>\n 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 \u201dTax rates getting lower\u201d if they’re not. Similarly, don’t state that that services are improving when what’s really happening is that they’re being cut.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s testing, however, this same marketing rhetoric lengthened the reading time \u2013\u00a0in other words, it degraded usability.<\/p>\n 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: \u201dAvoid ad-like expressions (\u2019Come and have fun in the library!\u2019). Instead,\u00a0<\/strong>describe the service and its use (\u2019You can read the daily newspapers in the library.\u2019).\u201d<\/p>\n Recommendations like this show that\u00a0the Finnish public sector\u00a0is already escaping the clutches of marketing.<\/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. 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 […]<\/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-3667","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\/3667","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=3667"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3667\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3671,"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3667\/revisions\/3671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yksityinenkielitoimisto.fi\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}