Do you know how to structure a document to make it easy for the reader to understand❓❓❓

What's important for readers to follow your document quickly and easily?

💥Easy to navigate!

💥Easy to read!

💥Easy to understand! What does that mean in practice then?

👉 A consistent, predicable order of sections - have a template that everyone follows. All procedures to have the same sections and order. All reports to follow the same order of information.

👉 Documents only include the information required to complete the activity or to repeat the study. Don't include 'nice to have' details, it just clogs up the doc. Be brief!

👉 Use signpost text to help readers navigate - headings, titles, headers, captions etc. - and include a verb, so readers clearly understand the context.

👉 Put details that most readers know in the back matter - references, terms and abbreviations, change history. So, it doesnt clutter the front of the doc.

👉 Check your sentence length - if they take more than 2 lines, then they are too long. Use simple words and simple sentence structure. Or break to bullets.

Or use a table for more complex info. If you aren't doing this, you are probably making it unnecessarily hard for your reader to read nad comprehend what you're writing. And nobody wants that! It might be time to master these techniques so that you're docs don't cause delay or confusion. Check out my brand new course called 'Writing User-Friendly Procedures'