Clear Writing

Each of us is responsible

The Mother-in-Law Test

Until a few minutes ago I was quietly enjoying one of the first truly crisp mornings in Maryland. Bright sun, the air just above freezing, and frost on the ground. Our girls are preparing for school, and they're excited because there's "snow" on the ground.

Then the silence was broken by my raving excitement. An article on the first page of the Marketplace page of today's Wall Street Journal caught my attention. Titled "On Ballots or Web Sites, Poor Design Sends The Wrong Message." Thomas E. Weber has written on a subject that's my favorite gripe: all too many of us don't put enough effort into sharing information.

News reports that don't convey the entire story and put the incident in perspective. Road signs that don't clearly explain recent changes in traffic patterns. Websites that have banner pages that are nothing more than a pretty graphic with a "skip" or "enter" button. Politicians and lawyers who are more interested in creating sound bites and sounding impressive than they are in answering questions posed to them (well, okay, this last example isn't anything new).

Mr. Weber reports that Amazon.com posted a diagram of its departments that was create in the form of a butterfly ballot, similar to the one used by the voters in Palm Beach County, Florida, the heart of the U.S. presidential voting tally debacle. This may be an intentional parody, but how many websites routinely fail to post easy-to-read directions? It's easy to post data, but it's hard to post useable information.

For example, I had the ITrain website redesigned after a focus group, including the association's board of advisors, gave the site a low usability rating. In less than 24 hours the site was totally redesigned to make it easier to navigate. For almost two years the site was up and active, members didn't complain, all was good. But after some honest feedback, I learned the site's design stunk like week-old house guests.

And, almost immediately following the site's redesign, page views (sometimes mistakenly called hits) to ITrain's site increased three-fold without any appreciable increase in the total number of unique visitors. Our site's visitors were viewing more pages -- and that's what we wanted. More information, less noise.

For years my coworkers and I used my mother-in-law as the proof reader for all of our new training books. I love my mother-in-law, and we have a wonderful relationship, so I know she won't mind my saying that, to put it lightly, she isn't as comfortable with computers as the other trainers and I. If Mary successfully completed each training exercise and was able to apply her new skills, the learning guide would be a winner. We should all apply the "mother-in-law" test to our technical writing.

If your mother-in-law can't understand exactly what you're writing, then you're overly obtuse. Be concise, be clear, be direct. Technical writing is like Hemingway: short, punchy, and understandable.

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updated November 20, 2000
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