From the course: Writing in Plain Language

Anticipate your readers' questions

From the course: Writing in Plain Language

Anticipate your readers' questions

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- You've probably been taught to focus on what you are going to tell people in your writing, but plain language is different. It has a reader focus, not a writer focus. Plain language is all about understanding what readers will ask about your topic. It's about anticipating and answering your readers' questions. Let's say your company offers a summer internship and you need to write a flier about it, so candidates will apply. You could approach the document by figuring out what you want to tell prospective applicants, like the dates, responsibilities, why you're offering an internship, and why this year it's paid not unpaid like in the past. Hold on! This flier is already turning into a not plain language document. Of the four things you wanted to tell your reader, applicants don't care about the last two. If you use a plain language approach, you need to anticipate your readers' questions before you begin writing and provide the information they want. A flier than answers these questions will be a plain language success. This anticipate the questions method is especially effective if your document has more than one type of reader. Imagine you're a public health official and there's a flu outbreak that's affected lots of elementary school children, so you want to offer guidance on how to reduce the spread of the flu. You have two sets of readers, parents and school leadership. Put yourself in your readers' place. What questions would you have? Anticipating the readers' questions this way will help you begin to organize the information. In some sections, you can answer parents' and school leaders' questions at the same time. In this example, the first section would be how to tell if it's a cold or flu. Both parents and school leaders have that question. The next section would be when should children stay home and again, parents and school leaders will have similar questions. As you go through this process, you may find you need to answer a few of the questions separately. It's the ultimate form of respect to think of your readers as people who have questions you will answer. This plain language mindset will help you write on-topic, useful documents that make your readers think, "Yes, that's exactly the information I need."

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