Center for Plain Language Awards

The Center for Plain Language has given out two awards this week for public websites that clearly and cleanly present information to the public. They are the US Department of Health and Human Services' Quick Guide to Healthy Living and the website for the City of Gresham, Oregon.

Both websites are worth a look as good examples of how to present content. They identify their audience and are written clearly for those readers. They make information easy to find, understand, and use. They omit unnecessary information and avoid dense, cluttered text.

Equally valuable are the criteria the Center for Plain Language uses to bestow these awards. You can also find Guidelines for creating plain language materials at their site. These are excellent resources for making sure your audience can quickly and easily find and understand the information you are presenting.

Microcontent

People read books. They scan websites.

Keep this in mind when adding content to your own website, particularly your home page. Use short sentences, short paragraphs. Develop a clean, clear, simple writing style. Write like Hemmingway.

An excellent strategy to draw people into your site is use micocontent. Microcontent refers to small bits bits of text, formatted so they can be easily scanned.

Example include...

Headlines:

Links:

Lists:

Buttons (image links):

Boxes:

Blockquotes: