Wait - do we already have a Copyeditor General?

My new hero is Annetta Cheek of the Center for Plain Language. She has helped push through the Federal Plain Writing Act (PDF), which mandates that government agencies should write plainly — that is, clearly and in a style that the target audience will understand — in all documents intended for the public.

The CPL website has some nice examples of government language before and after a good old-fashioned plaining.

My favorite:

Before
This rule proposes the Spring/Summer subsistence harvest regulations in Alaska for migratory birds that expire on August 31, 2003.

After
This rule proposes the Spring/Summer subsistence harvest regulations for migratory birds in Alaska. The regulations will expire on August 31, 2003.

The Plain Language Action and Information Network, a group of federal language nerds I would like to hug, has created a fabulous document (PDF) to help government agencies tighten their texts.

It covers everything from how to organize themes to avoiding passive voice to (let's get seriously basic here) how to write a topic sentence. Oh, and there's a whole section on writing for the web (yay!).

Frankly, I think every organization in the country, from hospitals (I'm looking at you, nice surgeon who advised that I take a pill sublingually) to banks to schools to businesses, needs to print it out, hang it on the wall, memorize it.

The Act goes into effect in October. Prepare yourselves, Feds!

Copyeditor General's ruling: Perhaps the first focus of the Act should be the Act itself, which begins:

To enhance citizen access to Government information and services by establishing that Government documents issued to the public must be written clearly, and for other purposes.

"...should be written clearly, and for other purposes"? What other purposes should it be written for?

Not even the President will be off-limits (Sir)

Dear President-elect Obama,

I see you're currently choosing your Cabinet. That's great. It's important to make the right decisions and bring in the right people. There's a lot of cleaning up to be done, and you're going to need help.

May I present, for your consideration, the possibility of a new, nominated position under the Department of Education?

I see this role as being responsible for maintaining standards of grammatical competence in all communications from commercial, non-profit and government organzations to the public: signage, posters, ads, websites — you name it. Heaven knows there are plenty of examples to justify the need.

It's time for the Copyeditor General.

I should warn you that this role should have a free hand to stamp out typos, punctuation errors and usability issues wherever they occur. And that goes right to the top, sir.

Let me explain.

It's great that your people have created change.gov to keep us up to date with the transition toward January 20. But I need to draw your attention to a few areas.

There's the serial comma issue, for instance. Are you for it or against it?







Here's the best one, sadly too large to embed here in a readable size: a paragraph that gives it to you both ways.

There are other hiccups on the site, both small and easily overlooked:



And large and frankly shocking, like the dropdown menu that (at least through yesterday) linked from this:



to this:



Thankfully, this last has now been fixed. But how long did it take?

Copyeditor General's ruling: Drop me an email, sir. I'll be waiting.

Oh, also, could you find a post for Melinda? She brought the serial comma issue to my attention, which means she's Deputy of the Week. Thanks.

Fruit baskets won't contain metadata

I haven't had much time do begin holiday shopping (or to do anything else for that matter), so this morning I tried to kick-start the process online. Unfortunately, I got derailed pretty quickly.

During a search for organic fruit-of-the-month clubs in the UK (of which there are none, it seems--there's a niche waiting to be filled), I came across the site for Pomona Fruit Baskets.

It certainly looked inviting enough.



There was a page describing the health benefits of their fruit selection:



So far, so good.

But when I went to check out the "Buy a fruit basket" page, the menu that dropped down showed this:



And the pages underneath had things like:



Copyeditor General's ruling: There's certainly nothing wrong with buying an off-the-shelf template for your company website, Pomona. But you should pick over the code and harvest out the pages that detract from the site's overall quality and visual appeal.

I mean, you wouldn't leave wrinkled grapes on a bunch, or keep moldy apples next to fresh ones, or pack over-ripe bananas underneath pineapples, would you?

Or would you?

Websites will be utopian

Today I'm being Usability-meister General again, though that cabinet position really belongs to someone else.

Imagine this scenario: You go to the zoo and discover that all the enclosures have six-foot walls. And you're five-three (a perfectly lovely height, I might add). You find a zookeeper and ask what's going on.

"Well," she says, "this zoo requires visitors to be tall. If you're not tall, you can use stilts to see the animals. Or, if you'd prefer not to use the stilts, we have a couple of pigeons and a three-legged dog in the parking lot."

Of course, that would never happen; a business that segregated and alienated its customers in such a way would have a terrible reputation.

Online, however, we find things like this:



It's essentially the same attitude. Sure, most computers today handle Flash, and it's no great challenge to download the player. But as an introduction, this page sends an unwelcoming message: we're only making ourselves available to certain people.

And it's not as though the entire Battery Wharf site requires Flash; much of it consists of simple lists of features, short paragraphs of description, a handful of PDFs, links to videos and photo galleries. Nothing, in other words, that couldn't be handled just as easily in HTML, with Flash for the multimedia content.

I understand the philosophy that qualified visitors to this site—those who have a genuine interest in buying a luxury waterfront condo—are more likely to have Flash-ready computers.

But aren't those prospective customers also looking for flawless service? For a company that anticipates their needs? For, let's say, a company whose site checks whether you have Flash and seamlessly serves up the appropriate content (and doesn't make you wait through eight-second loading times)?

Copyeditor General's ruling: If this site is really a reflection of the company's goal of "engineering Utopia," the experience should be a little closer to paradise. And if this project is really Utopia, why does it consist of multi-million-dollar condos on a spit of dockland in Boston?

Good URLs will go to heaven (and I'll stop with the puns)

You know when you meet someone for the first time and you realize it was just meant to be?

That was the mood at CGHQ today with the discovery of Good URL Bad URL, the creation of self-confessed nerd and URL-aholic Aaron Goldman. He knows how URLs should be presented for maximum readability and comprehension, so it drives him nuts when he sees addresses that are broken up, illegible or just way too long.

He takes pictures! He points out what needs fixing! He's a little obsessed! And he's okay with that!

Copyeditor General's ruling: Call off the search for the Associate Copyeditor General in charge of URLs. We have a winner. Everyone else, go read the list of best practices on GoodURLBadURL.com and apply what you learn. Let the poor guy take a break.

Emergency instructions will not cause panic

Spotted in an elevator:



How many ambiguities can you find, kids? Here's my list:

1) The sentence is hard to parse: I had to read it a couple of times to make sense of it. ("To operate emergency elevator, phone depress button"? "To operate emergency, elevator phone depress, button and hold"?)

2) "Depress button." Do I really have to bring the button down, man? Can't I just press it? Or push it?

3) "Depress button." But which one? Not shown in the photo are the seven buttons on the control panel: the numbers 1 through 4, the "open" and "close" buttons, and one marked "alarm." By a process of elimination, it appears the latter is the appropriate choice. Still, the label suggests it's intended to trigger a noise, not initiate a phone call.

2) "Hold until answering service answers." Um, isn't that what you'd expect from an answering service? And do we really need that extra detail? I suspect someone felt it important to explain that the response wouldn't come from inside the building--that Mr. Stucky Unlucky shouldn't expect help to arrive within minutes. But to me, it suggests an impersonal, and possibly uncaring, distance. Where exactly is this answering service? New York? Ohio? Bangalore?

3) "Indicating your location." Yeah, hello? I'm inside the elevator. I don't remember seeing the details elsewhere inside the metal box, but the info they're looking for--building address, elevator number, or anything else that might help a rescue crew locate a trapped vertical traveler--isn't posted near the sign.

So let's review: you're in the elevator. The doors have closed, you're descending slowly--and then, with a gentle lurch, you come to a halt. You wait a while, panic building (you were the last one to leave the office! It's Friday night! On a long weekend!). And then you read the sign a couple of times, check the buttons, look around to make sure there aren't any other buttons you should push instead, and finally, sadly, depress the alarm. You have a brief conversation with a disembodied voice.

And then you wait.

After a while, you take out a Sharpie and write on the metal wall:

"If you need help, push the "alarm" button and hold until someone answers. You'll be okay."

Copyeditor General's ruling: Signs directing behavior in unusual, unexpected and potentially frightening situations should be simple, clear and devoid of unnecessary detail. Also, it's always a good idea to carry a granola bar. Just in case.

Insurance will be reassuring

CGHQ received a letter recently:



You can see a larger version here, but it's so poorly written that I wanted to break it down into sections for easier analysis.

Paragraph one:



Sounds like a warning, doesn't it? "Targeting" is usually associated with fraudulent crime when not used in a marketing sense (which, some may argue, is the same thing).

So should I be concerned about impending victimhood?

Perhaps not; it appears the nameless underwriting company is reducing prices. Or is reducing the prices of other (various) companies. I wonder whether they know about this?

And it's not clear which prices are reduced. Or reduced off. One assumes it's house insurance, but it could be anything, given the apparent variety of other companies involved.

Let's move along.



I always thought it was "avail oneself of" something. At least, that's what the dictionary says. Few things are more irksome than the misuse of highfalutin' phraseology.

And this isn't great from a usability standpoint, either; they're making the reader (the customer) do the work of finding the number himself. Not as much of a gaffe on a printed letter as it would be online, where the trigger finger is always ready to click away if things become complicated, but the problem is the same. The reader has to look for the number (written in a much smaller type size) at the top of the page.

Would it have been so hard to repeat it in the sentence? Or to include the contact name here, instead of two lines later?

But perhaps everything will be okay. They kinda sorta guarantee it. Maybe.



Would have been a great pun if they were offering legal help with inheritance distribution. But they're not. So it's either an attempt at sarcasm or a not-so-subtle Sopranosesque threat.

And then, to close: nothing. No "Thank you for your time," no "With best wishes"--not even a "Yours, etc." It's a letter from no-one, pulled from the printer and whacked into an envelope with as little effort as possible. Three out of four paragraphs start with the same word--"please"--but that's as close as this company comes to trying to make nice with their prospective client.

On the positive side, at least there are no typos.

Texas websites will be messed with

Tomorrow we fly down to Texas for some family wedding-style fun, so recently I've been site-hopping, looking for event schedules, restaurant reviews and visitor information. As a result, I've encountered sites at all levels of usefulness and professionalism.

At the "nicely executed" end of the scale is austintexas.org, a lively, detailed collection of info, including a fun interactive map of Austin that lets you flag relevant attractions and leap from one location to another like a giant virtual kangaroo.

At the "please tell me this is some kid's homework" end of the scale is riverwalkguide.com, the homepage intro of which begins thus:

"Welcome to the San Antonio River Walk Guide. Your guide to everything along the River Walk and the Downtown San Anotnio area. "

So we start with a sentence fragment and a typo? Fabulous! I would be generous and assume the latter is intended to pick up search results from a mis-typed keyword were it not for the fact that the site has more errors, grammatical inaccuracies and flat-out oversights than should be legal for a promotional communication.

Fiesta survival tips: "From what to wear, where to park, its al its all here."

The River Walk Planner: "Create your very own River Walk Plan. Browse the San Antonio River Walk and nver lose track of where you plan to stay, places to see, and much more Get Stared Now!"

In an attempt at personalization, the site includes functionality to allow visitors to create an itinerary. However, the developers' coding and database skills only go so far, as is evident from this warning at registration:

"DO NOT FORGET YOUR PASSWORD - You can not retrieve your password and we can not recover it for you. Sorry, just please don't forget."

Best page on the site, though, is "Top 10 things to bring to San Antonio." Extra kudos for the warning to bring antacid ("this is so you can enjoy San Antonio’s spicy Tex-Mex food and tangy margaritas without grief") and the caveat that cash machines may try to rip you off ("Save money by not having to use the ATM’s").

The final tip on this page:

"10) Sun Block because if your not use to the South Texas Sun"

Oh, but I'm not use! What will happen to me?

Copyeditor General's ruling: Someone desperately needs to mess with Texas. Or at least San Antonio. Or at least riverwalkguide.com.

Oh, style guide bonus: the editors should figure out whether they're promoting the River Walk or the Riverwalk or the RiverWalk.

Websites will not be (d'oh!) under construction

Forgive me for turning this into "When I am Usability-Guy General" for a while, but I just saw the website for The Simpsons Movie.

Given that the film opens in 15 days, and that the publicity machine is already cranking at full speed, is it crazy to expect that the promotional website would be ready? *

The site has a very cute tool for creating your own avatar: how you would look if you lived in the Simpson's universe. And then you can explore Springfield, visiting the town hall, the Kwik-E-Mart and the Simpsons' home.

Here I am at Moe's Tavern. I think Homer likes me.



But hold on a moment: I should say you will be able to explore Springfield one day. For now, you can only get as far as the bar (oh, just like real life!). Everything else is unfinished.





The same is true for the "About the film" section: the only info currently available is a two-sentence synopsis that doesn't tell us anything we don't already know (Homer is stupid! The movie is animated! It's based on a TV show!). The "cast and crew" and "production notes" sections are either not written or, more likely, are still going through the legal/approval process.



Mobile and partnership info? Also coming soon.

Now, I'm sure that most of the audience for this movie won't notice or care about such things. There are trailers and games and downloads enough that a few non-functioning pages can be forgiven.

Not by me, though. And not, I'm sure, by usability guru Jakob Nielsen, whose 1994 Web Usability Study found this:

Users distinctly disliked seeing "under construction" markers. As one user put it, "either the information is there or it is not; don't waste my time with information you are not giving me." Users were particularly aggravated when they had linked to a page only to find that it was under construction. One user said "At least give me something for going to the page; don't put it out there if it is not working."

And that was written way back in the Internet's Dark Ages--you know, when The Simpsons was funny.

Copyeditor General's ruling: simpsonsmovie.com is a high-profile marketing tool, produced for a major corporation to promote a globally recognized brand. The least they could do is show a little professionalism.

Mmm ... professionalism ...

*And yes, I do assume that this is a temporary issue, and that this post will be redundant within a few days. At least I hope so.

Edit: The movie has now been released, and the previously unavailable areas are now all working. Except one.