March 2011 newsletter

Bouquet to media for clear reporting in a crisis

The tragic earthquake in Christchurch has affected us all, and we send our warmest wishes, sympathy, and support to our friends and clients. Like the rest of the country, we were glued to all available media from the time we first heard about the earthquake. We're impressed with how simply and clearly New Zealand's media — radio, television, and online — have managed to give us critical information.

Powerful new hands-on workshops give you instant benefits

We've come up with an exciting concept for five new workshops that makes them our most practical and interactive ever! These new workshops integrate hands-on learning, instant application, and expert or collegial review into a fantastic workshop and coaching experience.

Persuasive Proposals — Increasing the odds
This workshop on writing persuasive proposals features a full-day workshop with a follow-up coaching and feedback session.

The Ultimate Writing Workout
The Ultimate Writing Workout features a pre-workshop language assessment (using StyleWriter), a full-day workshop, plus a coaching and feedback session.

Web Lab
Led by two web experts, Web Lab is an intensive small-group workshop on which you'll transform some of your own webpages.

Smart Brand, Smart Writing
This innovative workshop gives you invaluable feedback from other participants on the everyday perception of your brand.

Technical Document Lab (coming soon)
This workshop focuses on clearly communicating technical information and uses the hands-on, small-group model with two trainers.

To book for any of these workshops, contact Michelle: michelle.rumens@write.co.nz.

Rosie Knight — our new find

At Write, we love having a diverse team of people with broad skills and interests — and our newest team member fits that profile perfectly. Rosie Knight has been a secondary school teacher, a theatre nurse, a clinical educator, a policy analyst, an aid worker, and a linguist. And throughout her varied careers, she's had a great love of words.

'I've always loved using language that supports people's learning. I had no words for what I was doing until I discovered the plain English movement, and realised that was what I'd been doing all along!'

Health literacy is one of Rosie's great interests, and she’s keen to use her long experience in the health sector to improve and clarify health information.

Lack of clear purpose in writing the biggest problem, survey shows

What's the most common problem you find with the documents your organisation produces? For most of you, it's lack of clear purpose. According to our online survey, lack of purpose far outstrips any other problem you encounter with your documents.

The next most frequent problem with documents was poor structure and information design, with language (jargon, legalese, and bureaucratic language) coming in third.

We can't say we're surprised! The survey results reflect what we find in our work all the time: when the purpose of a document is unclear, readers find the document confusing and hard to follow.

Thanks to all those who took the survey.

See a graph of the survey results on our website .