WRITE EFFECTIVELY Carol O’Brady NAPHT 16 th April 2016

Overview  Plain English  Write effectively

What do we write  Letters  s  Memos  Patient information  Guidelines/Policies  Reports  Phone messages  Signage

Is this you?  Not enough time to write  Too many ideas  Write too much or too little  Spend too much time rewriting  Don’t know what good writing means

What is good writing?  Good writing should flow, be interesting, concise and contain everything needed.

What is effective writing?  Effective writing goes further:  “Effective writing gets your message across to your target audience” or  “Effective writing is a tool that helps us to achieve what we want to achieve’’

What is plain English?  Faster to read  Faster to write  Easier to understand  Gets the message across more often, more easily and in a friendlier way

Plain English is….  Written in the ‘active’ mode  Written with the reader in mind  Written to communicate- not to impress

Key points  ‘What is the best way of putting this so that the audience will be interested and understand?’

Key points  Keep sentences short  Keep paragraphs short  Be active  Use lists or bullet points  Cut out useless words  Sound positive  Give instructions

Example-Text A The language you use to  train someone to do a task  assess someone’s competence in a task shouldn’t be harder than the language they need to do that task at work

Example-Text B THE LANGUAGE UTILISED IN VOCATIONAL TRAINING AND ASSESSMENT SHOULD NOT BE OF A HIGHER DEGREE OF DIFFICULTY THAN THAT REQUIRED FOR IDENTICAL WORKSITE TASK COMPLETION.

Make your writing easier to read  Which one is harder to read and understand?  Why is it harder?

Make your writing easier to read  Poor layout  All capital letters  All bold font  Sentences are centred  The text is one long sentence

Make your writing easier to read  Poor language  Long uncommon words-required (needed), utilised (used)  Language is impersonal  Lots of nouns: worksite task completion  Nouns used where verbs or adjectives would be better- degree of difficulty vs harder

Make your writing easier to read  Improve the layout  Use upper and lower case together  Break up the text  Use bullet points  Use lots of white space

Make your writing easier to read  Improve the language  Use everyday common words  Use personal language- involve the reader  Use verbs instead of nouns  Use prepositions  Use adjectives

Make your writing easier to read  Be consistent  Break up text  Use colour and images appropriately  Use space so text stands out  Use a clear, readable font  Emphasise text carefully

Readability Tests  Gunning Fog Index  Looks at number of words in a sentence and number of syllables and predicts a reading age

Readability score Thank you for your and your proactivity. As stated in the letter the number to ring outside of hours is which is my mobile number and is on 24/7. I will then handle the emergency by despatching and delivering myself or by delegating to the person on call for the company on that weekend or time. The longest part of the process will be the amount of time to deliver from our warehouse to the hospital which in your case will be short but we also offer the same service to Letterkenny and Bantry

Readability score  Reading Score-13.5  College first or second year student (age 20s)  For general audience-less than 12 (age 18-19)  Sun newspaper-age 9

Write an  You have been asked to add an item to a stock list, but it doesn’t fit in with current guidelines or your formulary  Write a reply to the CNM saying this  Who to cc  Do you need to link s researching this?

Write a memo  Changing brand from Tazocin to Piperacillin- tazobactam Clonmel brand  Write a memo

Write a memo  Include reason for change  When is it happening  Administration advice  Stock/non-stock  Who to send memo to  Who to CC  Any template (create a template)

Useful resources     Write effectively-Tim Albert