It’s important to get a PLS right. When done well, these summaries can improve health literacy in the general public and encourage the pharmaceutical companies that sponsor clinical research to operate more transparently. These eight hacks, adapted from tips by the Plain Language Association International and The Center for Plain Language, will help you master your next PLS.

Lawyers spend a lot of time in Word, but one of the biggest challenges in finding solutions to problems is that Microsoft don’t use the same terms that lawyers use. How can you figure out what to do if you don’t know the term for it?

Drafting complex law documents can be intense work. Fortunately, Microsoft Word has a vast array of free, built-in tools that lawyers can use to make the document creation process easier.

Exploring technology options can quickly become complicated and overwhelming. Even when you focus on document creation workflows, it’s hard to appreciate the options and determine the right-size fit for your needs. To make the right choice, you must see the big picture.

Legal Training and Assessment: Programs and Resources to Supercharge Your Legal Tech Skills

When lawyers spend more time efficiently using Microsoft Word, and less time fighting it, everyone benefits. Lawyers can spend more time drafting arguments rather than drafting documents.

Today, The Chicago Manual of Style moves into proofreading software for the first time. I’m delighted to say that PerfectIt will be its platform. Whether the Manual is part of your work or the basis of your organization’s house style, The Chicago Manual of Style for PerfectIt will give you a new level of confidence in the text you deliver.

Sometimes the best way I can help people is to explain exactly what’s happening. In the case of PerfectIt Cloud, I think it’s going to surprise you. But let’s start with the big news that I know you wanted to hear. The Chicago Manual of Style for PerfectIt Has Feature Parity Across Versions.

Here are some ideas for what to do about 42 of the most hated buzzwords.

Before you schedule an interview with your SME, you’ll want to do a bit of homework first. Plopping down in front of them and saying “tell me everything you know” will waste both of your time—and likely won’t get you the focused content you need. Instead, take an organized approach to working with an SME. Here are six steps to guide you through the process.

Are your legal documents showing their age? That’s the question that the Association of Corporate Counsel asked. If you’re reading this, then you probably already know that it’s time to update your form documents and bring them into the modern era.

American Legal Style now consists of more than 125,000 corrections for legal users—that’s four times as many corrections as were available just six months ago. Here’s the story behind the improvements.

For professional editors, climbing to the top of their field and staying there is challenging. Being consistently good at your job means you will have returning clients who will, hopefully, refer others to you.

Knowing your audience is critical in technical writing. If your content isn’t catered to the right audience, your readers may be turned off by your copy. They may not understand the critical information you’re trying to convey. And if you have to rewrite your copy? That’s a waste of time, resources, and effort. So how do you tailor content to specific audiences? Here’s a three-step process for learning about your audience and producing content specific to their needs.

The COVID-19 pandemic has shined a spotlight on the World Health Organization (WHO), an intergovernmental organization that works worldwide to promote health, keep the world safe, and serve the vulnerable. As part of their work, WHO publishes a range of documents, from international health standards, to “situation reports” describing progress in fighting a disease, to advice for the public on staying safe and healthy.

The importance of good writing in technical grant proposals is significantly underestimated. Have a thought for the grant review committees. Reviewing 40 or 50 grant applications for three or four funding opportunities is depressing enough, but when they are written by scientists, engineers and tech people with few writing skills, it can be agony. Are you surprised that grant proposal reviewers respond better to well-written proposals?

Spellcheck is one of the most basic checks that editors and writers run on their documents. But those same editors and writers will tell you that spellcheck doesn’t always know what to do with complex or unusual terms like drug names.

Military writing is not just instruction manuals. It includes official correspondence, reports, academic writing projects, contracts, blog posts, press articles and many other genres. The U.S. Army alone lists over forty kinds of official army publications. As technical writers, we can learn a great deal from military style rules. But we also need to understand when and how to deviate from them, to have the right effect.

Learn technical writing best practices for turning complex or unfamiliar topics into content that’s easier to understand, follow, and use.

With 193 member states, the United Nations could probably have 193 different style guides. Fortunately, the organization has settled on just one United Nations Editorial Manual. The comprehensive online guide includes style suggestions for everything from acronyms to numbering of maps and figures.