As You Write

Organize Your Content in a Reader-Friendly Way

Identify Key Questions. Anticipate the questions your audience may have about the topic. What will they need to know to have a good understanding of the subject?

Structure Your Draft. Arrange your content based on these questions, following the order in which a reader might logically ask them. If appropriate, you may want to:

• Create headings based on the topic to be addressed in that particular section.
• Adopt a Q&A format, using the questions as headings to guide your audience through the document.
• Make headings about each topic that form a complete sentence.
• Include a summary at the beginning of the document that capture the main conclusions, recommendations, or important insights of your project. This allows the reader to understand the key messages quickly.

Ensure Logical Flow. Start with the important conclusions/outcomes of the piece to capture the reader's interest at the beginning. This helps to set the context and importance of the information that follows.

Describe Processes. If any of the information you are conveying to the public involves a process, set out that process clearly for the reader. Include a flowchart or other graphic that shows what needs to occur at each step as well as which actions are to be taken by the individual and which are handled by the Department and provide the appropriate time frames.

Be Concise ...

Government documents often use complex, academic-style sentences to demonstrate expertise, which may not effectively communicate information to the general public. This bureaucratic style, with its dense and lengthy sentences, can hinder our mission and values by making it difficult for people and communities to understand our messages.

Examples:

✗ "With the prior written consent of the Planning Board, which is not to be unreasonably withheld, the Planning Board can grant, within 14 days of the application, the developer permission to assign the development agreement."

✓ "The Planning Board may allow the developer to assign the development agreement within 14 days of the application. The board must give written consent prior to the assignment. The board cannot withhold consent without reasonable justification."

✓ "The Planning Board may allow the developer to assign the development agreement under the following circumstances:

• within 14 days of the application, and
• with written board consent prior to the assignment.

The Planning Board cannot unreasonably withhold consent to the assignment."

Review your sentences for excessive detail, repetitiveness, and redundant words:

✗	✓
"I received and read the email you sent yesterday about the report you're writing for the project. I agree it needs a thorough, close review from someone familiar with your audience."	"I received your email about the project report and agree it needs a review from someone familiar with your audience."
"The test revealed conduction activity that was peculiar in nature."	"The test revealed peculiar conduction activity."

Tips:

• Set word or page limits for your project and adhere to them - attention spans are short. If this writing project is periodical, challenge yourself to convey the same amount of information as the previous version in fewer words.
• Remove unnecessary words.

While conciseness is valued, increasing the chance that your reader will understand your message is the ultimate goal. Using plain language doesn't always require you to shorten a sentence or paragraph. It is preferable to maintain the length of the section or include a few more words to make a concept clearer to your reader.

Increase Readability

Use simpler sentences that are easy to understand. Shorten sentences and paragraphs where possible and vary lengths.

• Are you using words that your audience is familiar with?
• Is there a way to express the information in a simpler way that still provides your audience with the information that they need to know?
• Does using a less precise, but more familiar word going to change the meaning of the sentence/paragraph from your target audience's perspective?

Example:

✗"The proposed development will feature a multi-modal transit hub to facilitate interconnectivity and reduce the reliance on private vehicles, thereby promoting sustainable urban growth.

✓"The proposed building includes a station that connects different types of transport. The station will reduce residents' dependence on private cars, making the city more environmentally friendly."

Other ways to increase readability:

• Create white space between paragraphs.
• Use headings and subheadings beyond section titles.
• Use bulleted or numbered lists instead of narratives where applicable.
• Use bold or italic or formatting to emphasize key words or phrases; avoid underlining - online readers may confuse it with a hyperlink.
• Instead of including clunky URLs, create hyperlinks and change the URL to explanatory text.
• Use Callouts. A callout is content that stands out from the regular content on the page. Callouts are designed to emphasize information that you want the reader to focus on. There are several different types of callouts that emphasize a quote or a particular sentence/paragraph, provide additional facts or statistics, or summarizes content that may be helpful to your reader but is not essential to your document.

The Publications, Graphics, and Web Development Section is happy to assist you with creating a callout if you are not sure how to display the information; note the content that you want to highlight in your document, and we'll take it from there.

Create Figures to Help Your Reader

Find ways to convey the necessary information using a minimum of written text, accompanied by a figure (chart/table/graph/illustration/infographic), which helps with keeping your project concise and increases white space for more readability.

Would you prefer to read this?

Approximately 77.14 acres is designated retail, 116.16 acres industrial, 2.26 acres mixed used, and 14.08 acres office. The retail uses are concentrated along Bladensburg Road, Kenilworth Avenue, and Annapolis Road. Industrial is concentrated west of Kenilworth Avenue, in the Town of Edmonston. The little mixed use or office uses that exist in the sector plan area is centered in the core near the intersections of Bladensburg Road, Kenilworth Avenue and Annapolis Road. (72 words)

Or this?

Land Use in Port Towns

Use	Size (Acres)	Concentrated Areas
Retail	77.14	Bladensburg Road, Kenilworth Avenue, Annapolis Road
Industrial	116.6	West of Kenilworth Avenue in Edmonston
Mixed-Use	2.26	Centered in the core near intersection of Bladensburg Road, Kenilworth Avenue, and Annapolis Road
Office	14.08	Centered in the core near intersection of Bladensburg Road, Kenilworth Avenue, and Annapolis Road

(43 words)

Do you need help with creating images, tables, charts, or infographics for your project? We can also make existing figures more reader-friendly. Just let us know.

Numbers

In general, numbers one through nine should be spelled out. Use figures for numbers 10 and above. However, there are some exceptions:

Exception	Example
Spell out any numbers that begin a sentence. But if that number is a year, use the numerals.	Twenty-three years ago, the legislation went into effect. 1923 was the year that the house was built.
When numbers below 10 are written as decimals, use the figures.	Trees should be planted 3.5 feet apart.
Figures are used for all ages, percents/percentages, units of currency, dimensions	the 53-year-old, 4 percent of the population, $2.00, 5-feet, 3-inches
If using orders of magnitude (hundred, thousand, million, etc.) after a single-digit number that does not represent currency, spell it out. However, if you are referring to currency, spell it out.	four million people, but $4 million.
If the number is part of a formal name, follow the style used.	7-Eleven or 4th Street
When two numbers are written next to each other in a sentence, one of them should be spelled out to avoid confusion. If one number refers to a measurement, it should remain a figure.	We asked for thirty 10-inch boards.

• Units of measure less than 1.00 are singular and take the singular verb.
• Ordinal numbers are expressed without the superscript, but spell out first through ninth (second, 31st).
• If there are many numbers within a paragraph, keep the numbers in each category consistent. Here are two examples:

  A mixture of buildings—one of 103 stories, five of more than 50, and a dozen of only 3 or 4―has been suggested for the area. In the second half of the nineteenth century. Chicago's population exploded, from just under 30,000 in 1850 to nearly 1.7 million by 1900.

• Use the word "number" instead of "#" or "no." (Note, however, that resolutions from the Planning Board use "No." For example, PGCPB Resolution No. 04-23.)
• Always spell out "percent" in text. The % symbol is acceptable in charts and graphs but must be used consistently.

Inclusive and Bias-Free Language

• Planning Department content should be bias-free and as inclusive as possible to best represent the public we serve.

• Avoid references to personal characteristics such as race, sex, gender, ethnicity, disability, age, religion, sexual orientation, or socioeconomic status unless relevant to the topics discussed.

• Do not use gender-specific suffixes. There is almost always a gender-neutral alternative.

Some examples:

Term	Gender-Neutral Alternative
chairman/woman	chair
actor/actress	actor/performer
fireman	firefighter
policeman	police officer
man/woman	person/adult
waiter/waitress	server
maiden name	family name/surname

We must acknowledge, however, that language and culture is constantly evolving, and the communities that are the subject of these conversations are not monolithic:

• LGBTQ is an acceptable acronym on first reference for people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer, but the term queer can be a slur in many contexts.

• Communities from the Latin American diaspora may have differing opinions on use of the terms "Latino/a," "Hispanic," or "Latinx."

• The terms "Black" and "White" are generally capitalized, although "Black" is often used interchangeably with "African-American" although it depends on context (for example, Black History Month in the County showcases the experiences of the African-American ethnic group while County statistics refer to a "Black or African-American" category to reflect residents of African-American descent as well as Black people whose immediate ancestry is from Africa, the Caribbean, or other parts of the African diaspora).

• Some people from the disabled community prefer person-first language ("person who is blind" or "person who is autistic") while others prefer identity-first language ("blind person," "autistic person").