Do complex laws, rules, and procedures direct your organization’s work? Do you find stakeholders asking questions that someone has already answered? Is it hard to get the info you need to do your job well?
Does the work coming out of your office clearly show who does what, when, and how? Or—does it confuse users, waste time, and put people, environments, or resources at risk?
Plain Talk moves readers from stalled confusion to quick compliance. When we write to pass knowledge to users so they can use it as a tool to get work done, things change.
For 12 to 20 years of your life, you wrote to show what you know, not to equip others. Academic writing helped you process information for your own understanding and demonstrate what you know to others who already know it—so they could assess you.
Your job now is to give what you know to others as a tool—so they can understand it and use it to get work done.
By law, military, federal, and state government writers must use plain language. With the right tools and techniques, anyone can write well.
How do we know Plain Talk works?
We pioneered and piloted our training in Washington. Washington state government developed standards, we trained them, and real use tested them.
One letter written by the Washington State Department of Revenue to test plain talk led Washington businesses to self-identify and pay $5 million dollars in previously uncollected revenue.
That was the greenlight we needed. We got to work. We developed plain language training for every writer behind a Washington state government computer.
We’ve seen thousands of examples over 20 years.
When people understand what you’ve written after one reading, see how it applies to them, and use it to take correct action, your work life changes. Your work changes the lives of others.
We’re grateful for the trust public sector leaders place in us. We train public servants whom we deeply respect. We serve you, so you can best serve your communities.
How can our experience serve you?
Military, federal, state, and local public employees learn to convey big ideas clearly and simply with us.