You’ve probably heard the scare stories about automation cutting swathes through traditional employment. Artificial intelligence (AI) can now even write news reports – so could content designers who create clear, easy to use information on GOV.UK also find themselves redundant?
Content written in the active voice helps users understand what they have to do to complete tasks. It reduces confusion by making it clear who is responsible for every action.
We organise regular content clinics across Defra group publishers. Statutory guidance "What are the restrictions on publishing content as statutory guidance?" The style guide says use them for guidance that relevant users are legally obliged to follow. Don’t use for …
The Defra content team held its first content clinic on a slack channel with editors from Natural England, the Animal and Plant Health Agency, the Rural Payments Agency, Environment Agency and Defra. Headings Can we use H4s in detailed guides? No - …
You might have heard that people have had enough of experts. Those people are definitely not content designers. Experts help content designers write factually and legally accurate guidance. Without input from a subject-matter expert (SME) content could lead its users …
How Defra designs content in plain English that's easy to use and legally correct.
How Defra designs content so it's legally accurate, easy to find and easy to read.
When producing Defra’s Smarter Guidance for GOV.UK, some people ask: ‘how long should we make this guide?’ The shortest guide I’ve seen was a single url. The longest was 40,000 words. These examples don’t show the acceptable range of a …
We use plain English so you can understand anything we publish quickly and easily. Still with me? Thought so. I could’ve said: Simplifying language facilitates the comprehension process of our written guidance. You’d just about get it, but you’d probably …
