Plain and Simple: How to Get Rid of the Jargon and Write for Real People
Sunday, Oct 13 1:00 - 4:30
Presented by Donna TalaricoAccessibility isn’t just related to visual and functional elements of a website; it’s also about readability. Aside from the running industry jokes about “what the heck even is bursar?” the words we put on the page matter. For SO many reasons. For traditional undergraduate students, parents are a big part of the decision-making process, but is our content written with parents of first-generation college students (or first-generation in the U.S. students) in mind? This session will show how and why to get rid of the alphabet soup, cash in those $5 words, and limit the formal and academic-speak that so often plagues our pages. The result is not just more accessible content, but also more clarity for all. (And then we can save our massive vocabularies for the Sunday crossword or Words with Friends!)
About
Donna Talarico
Donna Talarico is an independent writer and founder of Hippocampus Magazine and Books its annual conference, HippoCamp. Talarico has more than two decades of experience in marketing communications, writing, and media, and about half of that time has been in higher education. She writes an adult learner marketing column for Wiley, and has contributed to CASE Currents, Guardian Higher Education Network, The Writer, mental_floss, various alumni magazines and other trade and mainstream publications.