Plan Your Project

Plan Your Project

Identify the Purpose

Clearly state the objective of your project.

• Are you summarizing information for the Planning Board or District Council, informing the public, studying a problem or something else?
• Your purpose will influence your language, tone, and document length.
• For instance, use a formal tone for documents to be reviewed by the Planning Board or other officials, but a professional yet conversational tone works for public communications.

Know Your Audience

• Identify your readers and their characteristics. Understand who will read your document. Tailor your content to their needs, whether they are families, business owners, or environmental advocates. Consider their age and familiarity with technology.
• Think about what your audience needs to know rather than simply what you wish to convey.
• If you are addressing multiple audiences, adapt your message to meet everyone's information needs, possibly creating different document versions for varied audiences. The Publications Section is happy to work with you on tailoring your messages.

Need help with planning a project?

The Publications, Graphics, and Web Development Section. can assist. We can enhance your documents, web pages, and presentations by ensuring error-free content, consistent style, and engaging design. We also offer:

1. Custom images, infographics, and charts to enhance engagement.
2. Drafting content for webpages, including timelines, boundary maps, and contact details.
3. Social media strategies across platforms to broaden your message's reach.
4. Designing promotional materials such as posters, flyers, postcards, and banners.
5. Capturing high-quality photos and videos, including aerial drone imagery.

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 a reader might logically ask them. If appropriate, you may want to:

• Create headings based on the topic addressed in that 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.

Each paragraph should be short, cover only a single topic, use appropriate transitions, and include a topic sentence.

Ensure Logical Flow. Start with the essential 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, clearly outline the process 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.

Start with the End. Your audience scans messages to determine their meaning and often does not read the entire document. 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

Increase Readability

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

• Are you using words that your audience is familiar with?
• Is there a way to express the information simply that still provides your audience with the information they need to know?
• Does using a less precise, but more familiar word 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 or sidebars. A callout is content that stands out from the regular content on the page with a box or change in fonts and background color. Callouts emphasize points that you want the reader to focus from the main text, such as a quote or important statistic. A sidebar is a detailed callout that may include background information, glossaries, examples, or anecdotes. The text in a sidebar adds to rather than repeats information in the document's regular text.

We are happy to assist you with creating callouts or sidebars; note the content that you want to highlight in your document, and we'll take it from there.

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 style, with its dense and lengthy sentences, undermines M-NCPPC values by making it difficult for individuals and communities to understand our messages.

While plain language guidelines value conciseness, increasing the chance that your reader will understand your message is the goal. Using plain language doesn't always require you to shorten a sentence or paragraph. We prefer you to maintain the length of the section or include a few more words if needed to make a concept more straightforward to your reader. See the examples below.

Make it 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."

Make it 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."

Remove Excessive Detail, Repetitiveness, and Redundant/Filler 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."
"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 should be shortened.

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 conciseness 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)

The Publications Section can help you with creating images, tables, charts, or infographics for your projects. We can also make existing figures more reader-friendly - let us know.