Chelsey Donohue

I’m currently the Acting Chief of Product Design and Standards at DTO. Before joining this team, I spent almost 15 years as a web communications advisor, so I used the Canada.ca Content Style Guide often.

In that role, I helped to redesign and rewrite our department’s intranet. We ensured the entire intranet was written in plain language which involved a lot of change management and training colleagues across the country. This experience helped me learn how to better demonstrate the principles of plain language. In my time at DTO and working as a communications advisor, I’ve been very fortunate to learn from many of the people in the GC plain language community. 

Anne-Sophie Dumetz

I’m a Senior Content Advisor for Partnerships at CDS. I started writing in plain language as a journalist in 2004, and later, as a senior communications advisor and editor of the Style Guide at the Canadian Museum of History. In these roles and others in the private and public sector, we used plain language techniques to say things clearly and simply, so those who read or hear our content could easily understand what we’re communicating. 

Being clear is the kindest, best thing we can do for those who are paying attention to what we’re communicating. Plain language techniques help us do just that.

In August 2024, our updated plain language section was published to the Canada.ca Content Style Guide. Getting there was a true collaborative effort.

 Here’s how we got there:

• Created a bilingual plain language working group: plain language experts from across the Government of Canada came together to review and suggest improvements to the section. Having experts in English and French was essential since the rules are unique to each language. Many members are also active in the GC Plain Language Community of Practice.
  
• Worked openly, collaboratively: our team and the working group, both together and individually, reviewed and suggested changes to improve the section. By the end, we had over 100 versions of the documents! Before publishing the final content, we reviewed and discussed any conflicting suggestions. 
  
• Received input from other CDS language experts: the CDS Content Design Community of Practice and the Linguistic Services team reviewed our almost final version.
  • You can read about how their feedback styles improve content in the blogs on content critiques and inclusive French writing.
    
• Engaged with Accessibility Standards Canada and reviewed our content against their draft standard on Plain Language.
  
• Coordinated with the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat (TBS) to remove recommended reading levels from the Guidelines on Making Communications Products and Activities Accessible.

Old structure: Not as easy to scan

We wanted the guide to have a more useful structure with information that’s easy to follow.

We needed to start with the most important information: Be direct, brief, and write easy-to-scan content.

Screenshot of the previous plain language table of contents. The content wasn’t easy to navigate.

New structure: Beginner-friendly and easy to navigate

A few examples of the changes we made:

• Adjusted the structure and names of subsections to make them clear and easy to understand. The table of contents now has more subsections to group the information, making it easier to find (sub)topics quickly.

• Added the new “Getting Started with plain language: writing for readability” section at the start of the guidance. Before, we had checklist-style information at the end, it’s now at the start to be more beginner-friendly and expanded with more useful content. It’s a great section to print and keep by your desk as a job aid, or bookmark in your browser.
• Made plain language resources easier to find by moving them up from the appendix to the new, enriched resources subsection.

Screenshot of the updated plain language table of contents. It now has expansive, easily navigable content.

Using plain language isn’t about oversimplifying. It’s making sure everyone can easily understand the message. We all benefit from it. We wanted that written out for people who don’t work with plain language all the time. 

So we added the The duty to be clear: Plain language requirement as a clearer, more compelling rationale; it’s our job to be clear so we can be understood.

Previously, the Canada.ca Content Style Guide and TBS’s Guidelines on Making Communications Products and Activities Accessible had recommended readability levels.

Research shows that readability formulas don’t work because they:

1. Aren’t created for technical documents. 
2. Assume that short words are always the better words.
3. Can result in different/conflicting scores from different programs. 
4. Don’t work with many documented features of plain language, such as deciding what content is right for your readers, organizing it in the way that makes most sense for the audience, using standard formatting (such as bullets and headings) to guide people through content, etc. 

We realize that some writers find readability tools a helpful first step to identify some areas that need work. You can still use readability tools, we’re just recommending that you don’t rely on them to accurately evaluate how easy it is to read and understand content.

The inverted pyramid diagram shows a writing technique for how to order content on a webpage. The previous diagram presented most of the guidance within an image, which is not an accessibility best practice.

So we updated the image to be less text-heavy and refined the guidance to be more simple and clear. We moved content out of the image, simplified the instructions, and merged related links and more information.

Before: Text-heavy diagram

Now: Simple + clear = easy to understand & apply

Our previous guidance didn’t include guidance on how to explain a technical term, but these are common in GC content. So we added an example for how to do this. Now, we advise that if you need to include technical terms, explain them using concise, clear, easy-to-understand words or give an example to help non-specialists understand.