KMb Series: Plain Language
Have you ever come across a paragraph filled with jargon, acronyms, and incredibly long sentences in size 8 font?
In academic circles, chances are we've all slogged our way through dense writing that takes a few tries to understand.
Clear, accessible writing is important to sharing the story of your research and reaching a wider audience. Join us for a webinar that shares tips and guidelines for plain language writing, facilitated by UCalgary News Managing Editor David Hedley. We’ll also share some tools to support plain language writing.
Facilitator:
David Hedley, Manager, UToday
Before joining UCalgary 11 years ago, David worked at weekly and daily newspapers in Alberta in a variety of roles. He helped cover news as a writer, photographer, copy editor, assignment editor, page designer, and online producer. Now as UToday editor, he's doing all those things at once!
A turning point in his career came when he completed a master's degree in professional communications (at Royal Roads University, sorry). He published peer-reviewed articles in a journal and a textbook on the emerging field of digital journalism. At the time, he thought how cool it would be to some day have a job helping to share stories about academic research and university goings-on with a wider public audience.
Today he leads the operations of a small but mighty team of two editors (including himself), a digital specialist and a photographer. They produce and publish the daily UToday newsletter, drawing from articles created by communicators across campus. UToday focuses on, you guessed it: academic research and university goings-on.
Along the way, David learned a few tricks of the trade when it comes to plain language. He'll share insights on audience consideration, sentence structure, readability, information-shaping techniques, title focus, and more.
See the event page for all upcoming webinars in the series.