Good afternoon everyone,

How are you? I've been thinking a lot this week about… well, honestly, about making powerpoint slides, when I'm always careful to have one joke per slide for people to discover and enjoy, but more broadly about communicating and how to make words easier for people to pay attention to. So it feels like a good week to highlight the work of Rebecca Monteleone, disability researcher and plain language advocate.

Thank you Margo for sending me this excellent illustration of plain language and the volume of work it takes to make sentences and paragraphs explicable. Here's Rebecca explaining her process:

When doing a plain language translation, my first step is always to do a close read of the original text. I identify the main points, the order information is presented, and any terms or concepts that I think will need to be defined or replaced. I always think to myself “what does this sentence/idea/concept assume the reader already knows?” There is so much implied in how we write, and plain language should aim to make the implicit more explicit.

https://pudding.cool/2022/02/plain/

Here's an interview with Rebecca on her work. She's talking specifically about plain language in news media here, lots to learn in general too:

Talk, talk, talk to disabled people. That’s going to be the number one way to do it. Hire disabled people. That’s the beginning of the transformation, to make sure that that people are in the room. That has historically not been the case in the news media and in many other places. The first step toward moving toward anti-ableism is putting your money where your mouth is and hiring talented, disabled journalists.

https://ethics.journalism.wisc.edu/2021/05/11/the-call-for-plain-language-a-q-a-with-disability-studies-professor-rebecca-monteleone/

Have a smashing May Day weekend,

Alex xx.