Plan Your Project

Plan Your Writing Project

What is Your Project's Purpose?

Are you summarizing information for the Planning Board or District Council, informing the public, offering solutions to a problem or pursuing another objective?
Knowing the answer to this question will guide your choice of words, tone, and the project's length.
For instance, decide if a formal tone is necessary or if a less formal approach will suffice, provided it remains professional and, where necessary, authoritative.

Focus on Your Audience

Identify your readers and their characteristics. Are they likely to be individuals/families, small business owners, pedestrians, environmentalists? Consider their age range and technological proficiency.
Think about what your audience needs to know rather than simply what you wish to convey.
If you are addressing multiple types of audiences, strategize how to adapt your message to meet everyone's information needs. Maybe it would help to have different versions of a document geared towards each target audiences; we are happy to work with you on tailoring your messages.

Need help with planning a project? Involve the Publications, Graphics, and Web Development Section. We offer:

Content editing for documents, web pages, infographics, and presentations to check for errors, consistency, style, and branding. Bring your content, and we'll refine it.
Creation of images, infographics, charts, tables, and other data visualization to enhance readability and engagement.
Drafting of essential background content for your project's webpage, including history, purpose, timelines, boundary maps, and contact details.
Development and execution of a social media strategy to promote your message across various platforms.
Consultant onboarding with publication specifications for consultant RFPs to create awareness of Planning Department standards.

The Publications, Graphics, and Web Development Section will ensure that your events are professional, well-publicized, and thoroughly documented by:

Designing promotional materials such as posters, flyers, postcards, banners, and other promotional materials, and more.
Capturing high-quality photos and videos, including aerial drone imagery.

Start with the End

Your reader is used to googling or using generative artificial intelligence products to get key messages quickly.

Here are a few ideas to keep your message front and center, particularly for a long document:

Include a summary at the beginning of a long document that captures the main conclusions, recommendations, or important insights.
Create a storymap for your project on the web.
Add callouts and sidebars to your document to highlight important information throughout the document

Organize Your Document 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 an adequate understanding of the subject? Think also about what information they don't need and remove it.

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.

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 Clear and Concise

Government documents often use complex, academic-style sentences to demonstrate expertise that 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. 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. See the examples below.

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.

Shorter

✗ "Appropriateness is evaluated by the Planning Board and the implementing agency for each specific project depending on community needs, environmental constraints, and right-of-way constraints, with final determination by the County Council."

✓ "The Planning Board and M-NCPPC assess project suitability based on community needs, environmental factors, and land use limitations, with final approval by the County Council."

Clearer

✗ "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, and 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."

Excessive detail, repetitiveness, or redundant/filler words removed


✗	✓
"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."
"Many Metro stations have facilities for bicycle storage. This facilitates riding a bicycle to a station, storing it there, and continuing the trip on Metrorail or Metrobus."	"Many Metro stations offer bicycle storage, allowing riders to continue their journey on Metrorail or Metrobus."

Tips:

Set word or page limits for your project and adhere to them; this will help you to review your document for the issues described above. If this writing project is periodical, challenge yourself to convey the same amount of information as the previous version in fewer words.
This list of unnecessary words will help you to identify the passages that need to be shortened.