Principles

1. Understand context of use

2. Choose what to say

3. Slash everything else

4. Edit sentences

5. Put into logical order

6. Demolish walls of words

7. Choose links

8. Check consistency

9. Rest it then test it

5. Put into logical order

Adjust the order of your sentences, paragraphs, and topics so that they build up in a logical order.

IF before THEN

It's easier to understand a sentence when "if" comes before "then".

Keep equivalent items parallel

When you have a bulleted or numbered list, make sure that the things in the list are all similar. There is a good explanation of this at Getting Ducks in a Row: The Rules for Displayed Lists

Bad example

Moving text is harder to read. It can cause problems for:
* people with dyslexia
* people with learning disabilities
* people who are visually impaired and use screen magnifiers
* anyone who speaks English as a second language
* It can also confuse some screenreaders, used by people who are blind

 

Why is it bad?

The last bullet point is a new sentence, and not equivalent to the other bullet points.

 

Better example

Moving text is harder to read. It can cause problems for:

* people with dyslexia
* people with learning disabilities
* people who are visually impaired and use screen magnifiers
* anyone who speaks English as a second language.
.
It can also confuse some screenreaders, used by people who are blind

List conditions separately

If you have to do one thing when condition A applies and other thing when condition B applies except when condition D applies then it becomes rather complicated to work out what is what.

Try this instead:

If condition A applies then do this.

If condition D applies then do that.

If condition D does not apply then if condition B does apply then do this other thing.

And now we can see that some of the possibilities aren't explained.

First things first, second things second

Often we want readers to do one thing then do another thing. Make sure you list them in the same order that you want them to be done.

Try writing like a recipe

Many good cookbooks follow this format for recipes:

• title of the recipe
• why you might want to cook it
• the ingredients you need
• the list of things to do with them (the method)
• any variations

When you're writing a list of instructions, try writing them like a recipe.

Tips and cautions

Many, many times you will find it more natural to write "Do this if you want to achieve that", or it's close relative "Do this unless that applies to you". These are natural to write and easy to read but there is reseach evidence to show that many people will obey the 'do this' part of the instruction even though they have read and understood the 'if' or 'unless' parts of the instruction.

IF before THEN

Dixon, P. 1987. "The Processing of Organizational and Component Step Information in Written Directions" Journal of Memory and Language, 26, pp24-35, Academic Press, Inc.

First things first, second things second

Adapted from 'Preserve temporal order' in Wright and Barnard