From the course: Learning to Write for the Web
Join today to access over 22,600 courses taught by industry experts or purchase this course individually.
Formal text is harder to read
From the course: Learning to Write for the Web
Formal text is harder to read
- Formal text is hard to read. It turns people off. If you use words that people don't use in everyday conversation, your readers have to work harder to understand what you're trying to say. Some readers won't bother to do this work, or they might get scared away by what they consider to be legal terminology, so they'll miss your message. There are two things you can do to make your text seem less formal, without resorting to colloquial expressions. The first is to write as if you were speaking directly to your audience, and the second is to write in the active, rather than the passive voice. It's easy to write as if you were speaking. In fact, I find it harder to make my writing more formal than I do to write in a conversational tone. So, why do people write in a stilted formal manner? Maybe they want to be taken more seriously, and they think that using legalese or jargon will help with that. Maybe they're embarrassed about the message they have to get across, so they want to hide…
Practice while you learn with exercise files
Download the files the instructor uses to teach the course. Follow along and learn by watching, listening and practicing.
Download courses and learn on the go
Watch courses on your mobile device without an internet connection. Download courses using your iOS or Android LinkedIn Learning app.