this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2023
1075 points (97.8% liked)
A Boring Dystopia
9789 readers
490 users here now
Pictures, Videos, Articles showing just how boring it is to live in a dystopic society, or with signs of a dystopic society.
Rules (Subject to Change)
--Be a Decent Human Being
--Posting news articles: include the source name and exact title from article in your post title
--If a picture is just a screenshot of an article, link the article
--If a video's content isn't clear from title, write a short summary so people know what it's about.
--Posts must have something to do with the topic
--Zero tolerance for Racism/Sexism/Ableism/etc.
--No NSFW content
--Abide by the rules of lemmy.world
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
We are required to write our customer facing self-help articles at no greater than an 8th grade reading level. Or people literally can't read to the end.
Largely removing and semblance of usefulness to them IMHO.
So this tracks.
This is nothing new though. I remember being in middle school and teachers saying that the most sophisticated newspapers at the time were written at an eighth grade level. Basically, it's the level where you're not alienating potential customers, I guess. And I suppose there's some benefit to dumbing down things like news. Maybe. I dunno.
As a lawyer, I have to take MASSIVE amounts of time to write and rewrite emails and letters to account for the fact that (1) no matter how important the matter, 80% of folks WILL NOT read the whole thing, (2) of the 20% that do read the whole thing, 50% will accidentally skip over key points. I’ve learned to use bullet lists, and as much as possible, to err on the side of plain language—even when doing so leads to an underinformed person, because the alternative is an entirely uninformed person. It’s brutal.
You should put more notewithstandings and Latin in your legal stuff. People like that ;)
Well, I’d like to say res ipsa loquitur, but obviously not. :)
How do you even measure that? Is there a guidebook?