We developed, piloted, refined and delivered a series of plain English writing workshops for staff at the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).
On request, the workshop was built as a series of four modules, each of two hours, to allow for flexible delivery.
The content was identified in collaboration with ACCC leaders.
Topics covered
- Find your purpose
- Step into the reader's shoes
- Choose content
- Chunk information
- Use the inverted pyramid
- Write topic sentences
- Add helpful headings and emphasis
- Make simple word swaps
- Shorten fragments and sentences
- Write sentences that tell a story
- Fix apostrophes
- Fix incorrect words
- Fix nonparallel structure
- Fix grammar and syntax
- Fix capitalisation
- Check content against ACCC style
- Do a short copyedit
Outcomes
In post-workshop surveys, all respondents said they expected to apply their learning to their job, and more than 80% said they would likely recommend the workshop to a colleague.