Some actual evidence

Hold your horses – this is a new edition of the Plain English Club newsletter. It's arrived in your inbox via the computer and keyboard of me, Iain Broome.

Sorry I have been so bad at sending newsletters this year. I hate being bad at sending newsletters. Rest assured, I plan to be better at sending newsletters for the rest of 2025. And this one is full of excellent content.

Many high fives,

Iain

PS Remember, if you do not want me to send you emails like this anymore, you can unsubscribe using the link in the footer or by signing in on the Plain English Club website.

User stories for content design

This post by Jack Garfinkel gives you an excellent overview of all things user stories. I can't recommend it enough.

If you are already a content designer, this is where you should send people when you are trying to explain user stories. If you are a copywriter or general clear language enthusiast, user stories are how you can make sure all that plain English you are writing is actually doing its job.

Creating a content design portfolio with no UX experience

This by Emily Wachowiak from Mozilla on the Button blog is good if you are new to the content world. I agree that real project work is the thing to shout about, even if that work feels small to you.

Work produced under real-world conditions showcases far more than your content design skills — it shows you know how to collaborate with a cross-functional team to solve problems and handle the setbacks, technical constraints, and compromises that inevitably pop up. 

Another recommendation from me. If your current role is not strictly in content design, you can still use some of its principles.

For example, if you work in marketing or communications, you can carry out some guerilla user research before you start writing copy. Or you can dig into your organisation's web analytics to see what search terms people are using to reach your website.

Then, armed with some actual evidence, you can take your findings to your bosses and say, "Hey big dogs! I think we should take this approach because it's what our users appear to want and need. Tell me I'm wrong!"

Best case scenario, they agree and allow you to take the first steps in reshaping your current role. You might even revolutionise the entire organisation! Worst case scenario, they tell you to pipe down and get the heck out.

Either way, you have done some content design work that you can add to your fledgling portfolio.

Trauma-informed content: what I've learned from the frontlines

For the last 16 months, I've been working on an extremely sensitive project where trauma-informed content design has been essential. As a result, I am a roughly one squillion per cent better content designer for the experience.

This post by Adrie van der Luijt gives you an idea of what trauma-informed content is and why it matters.

This is the reality of creating trauma-informed content that actually works. It’s not about theoretical frameworks or academic principles. It’s about understanding how trauma fundamentally changes how people process information and then having the courage to fight for their needs against organisational pressure to water things down.

The post also features several examples of trauma-informed content:

At Universal Credit, we discovered people needed absolute clarity. They didn’t want “your claim may be affected if your circumstances change” – they needed “you must tell us within 14 days if you start work or your benefits will stop”.

Assuming you too work in the content world, I strongly recommend you spend some time reading up on trauma-informed design. There are other useful posts on Adrie's blog and Rachel Edwards wrote an excellent intro, which I have linked to before.

I've also created a tag for trauma-informed content in my bookmarks collection if you need a place to start.

Just Keep Writing – On "content design" in the AI era

There are many hot takes on AI and how it is affecting us content bods flying about the internet right now. I quite like this one by Danielle McClune.

Words not to use

Brill list of words to avoid from the style manual of the Office for National Statistics. I always like it when these lists are either grumpy or include at least a little humour in them. Ideally, both.

For example:

drive out (unless it is cattle)

And:

deliver (pizzas, post and services are delivered – not abstract concepts)

And perhaps my favourite:

one-stop shop (we are not a retail outlet and creating a single place for everything often does not meet user need)

"Maybe the future of content work looks different from what we're used to. AI systems desperately need quality writing in places most people don't even think about: evaluations, taxonomies, training datasets. And the core skills of a great writer aren't going anywhere. You can't prompt your way into good judgment. That comes from experience, practice, and something you definitely can't automate: taste."
Danielle McClune

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