To get your message across in a deliberate and concise way that helps your readers, and to prevent mistakes, you should review and edit your work. We're aiming for a consistent voice and tone with all content, so please self-edit your content with our house style in mind.
Done doesn't mean deployed when it comes to your first draft
The first draft is typically where you'll explore your ideas and make your points. The second and third drafts are where you refine your points and craft a message that people will find helpful and enjoy reading. Give yourself some time between drafts so that content feels fresh when you return to it and you can review it with new eyes.
You should also ask someone else to review your work. A second pair of eyes is invaluable before publishing any public-facing content.
Delete anything that doesn't add to your point
When we write, our first drafts often include extraneous details that help us write the first draft, but aren't useful to the reader. When you review your work, ask yourself if everything you've included will be interesting or useful to the reader. Chances are, they're interested in the topic you've written about, but not necessarily the personal circumstances that led to your insights about the topic.
Use Grammarly and Hemingway
We have a corporate Grammarly account (details are with the software policies). Grammarly isn't always right, but its suggestions are right more than they're wrong, and we updated it to better reflect our style guide. Please always run your content through Grammarly. Make sure Grammarly is set to American English by following these instructions.
You should also use the free browser version of the Hemingway app with Grammarly at the same time. The Hemingway app identifies passive language so you can remove it. In the interest of using plain English, you should also aim for:
- Minimal text highlighted in red (red means it's very hard to read)
- Minimal text highlighted in yellow (yellow means it's hard to read)
The Hemingway app also highlights words or phrases where there's a simpler alternative.
Turn on your spell checker
Typos happen to the best of us, but there's a direct correlation between the number of silly mistakes in your content and the restraint an editor will exercise when going through the rest of your work. If there’s no editor checking your work, it’s even more important that you use your spell checker, Grammarly, and Hemingway to minimize mistakes. If typos slip through into the final copy, they impact the reader's confidence in the content and the people who published it. So it's important to make sure we keep typos to a minimum.
Use text-to-speech
Use text-to-speech software to listen to your writing. When we read our own text, we tend to read what we think we wrote rather than what we actually wrote (this is why typos are so persistent). Having the computer read the text makes typos and other mistakes we'd otherwise miss stand out.
To use Mac's built-in text-to-speech tool, go to System Settings > Accessibility > Spoken Content, and enable Speak selection. You can choose the voice to read your text from System voice. To listen to your content, highlight the text you want to hear, and use Option + esc on your keyboard to speak text.
Why we don't use ChatGPT and AI-generated content
Octonauts should read our note on why we don't use generated content on our websites.
White space is your friend
Dense paragraph after dense paragraph of text is intimidating and will put readers off. Try to break up big paragraphs by grouping similar thoughts into smaller paragraphs. If you're listing options or documenting steps, use bullet points or numbered lists instead.
More white space makes text more approachable.
Replace ambiguity with specificity
As an expert on your topic, it can be easy to forget what you didn't know before you became an expert. This can lead to making assumptions about what your audience knows. Don't feel like you have to explain every possible aspect of your topic or provide in-depth background knowledge for every post or piece of content. But do try to be specific in your writing to make it easy for non-experts to follow along.
When you review your content, look for words like it, they, them, and those. If there's a chance the reader might be confused by which it, they, them, or those you're referring to, be more specific so there's no doubt.