Our voice, tone and style

Visit the accessibility layout page to learn how to structure your content and meet accessibility guidelines.

Use active rather than passive voice. This will help us write confident, concise, clear content. Words like ‘was’ and ‘by’ show that you’re writing in passive voice. Scan for these words and rework sentences where they appear.

Using an active voice improves any written text. Among its many benefits for the reader, active voice:

• puts them in the moment
• generates a stronger connection to the action
• turns the call to action into a command
• makes it easier for those for who English is a second language or who comprehend text at a lower reading level to better understand the message

We use positive language – positive words, driving positive actions with positive outcomes.

Address the user as ‘you’ where possible. Your content should make a direct appeal to people to get involved or take action. For example:

• You can contact Shared Services by phone or webchat
• You can report your burglary online

Use I, we and you. Our communications are capable of being spoken out loud and sound as if they’re being addressed to a real person. We talk about people, not our communities or our officers and staff.

Plain English is not just about using simple language. It’s about making our content inclusive and accessible to everyone.

Use the guidelines in our style to achieve Plain English. Remember to:

• use short sentences
• avoid jargon, complex sentences, police speak or legalese
• use active voice, not passive
• score 65+ on Flesch Grade Calculators and achieve high readability
• use sub headers to structure your content
• use sub headers which are clear, not clever or ambiguous

There are many things you can do achieve Plain English. These guides will help you:

• How to create accessible content
• How to write in plain english

Reading age

We want everyone to understand what we have to say. Therefore we aim to write to a reading age of nine.

WMP employees often say that because they’re writing technical or complex content for a specialist audience, they do not need to write to a reading age on nine. This is wrong.

Research shows that higher literacy people prefer plain English because it allows them to understand the information as quickly as possible.

Likewise those for who English is a second language or who comprehend text at a lower reading age can understand your message.

There are tools across the internet which can give an indication to reading age such as Hemmingway app. When using the app aim for green.

Readability

Readability is a measure of how easy a piece of text is to read.

If the readability of your text is high, people will be able to understand your sentences easily. If the readability is low, people still might understand what you’re saying, but it’s likely to be a draining experience. Instead of focusing on the substance of your writing, they’ll need to spend a significant amount of energy unpacking overly complex vocabulary and sentence structure.

To be clear, big words and complex sentences aren’t bad. But using too many of them demands much more concentration from your reader.

You can measure readability using the Flesch Readability Calculator. Aim for a readability score of 65+.

To keep content understandable, concise and relevant, it should be:

• specific
• informative
• clear and concise
• incisive. Friendliness can lead to a lack of precision and unnecessary words – but remain human (not a faceless machine)
• emotionless. adjectives can be subjective and make the text sound more emotive and like spin. Applying our voice should portray our emotion

You should:

• use contractions like you’ll (but avoid negative contractions like can’t). Write out negative contractions such as can not.
• not let caveats dictate unwieldy grammar – for example say ‘You can’ rather than ‘You may be able to’

Structure is how we organise content on a page.

Use headers and employ a hierarchy

Put the most important information first. Place similar topics in the same paragraph, and clearly separate different topics with headings.

Start with a simple outline that includes key messages. This helps create a hierarchy and organise ideas in a logical way. This also improves scannability and encourages better understanding.

When using headers use the correct header level. Headers should always be nested and consecutive. Never skip a header.

Title (H1)

Heading (H2)

Subheading (H3)

Headers should be clear and instructional. Not clever and unclear.

Layout

Always arrange your content left to right.

Avoid directional language

Avoid directional instructions and language that requires the reader to see the layout or design of the page. This is helpful for many reasons, including layout changes on mobile.

• Use: “Select from these options” (with the steps listed after the title)
• Avoid: “Select from the options on the right.”

Write out links correctly so they read well on screen readers.

Do not used repeated link titles such as ‘click here’ or ‘find out more’

If you named all your links ‘click here’ or ‘find out more’ that is all a person using a screen reader would see.

Links need to be given a clear and accurate title so it can be easily identified what the link is about, and where the link is going to.

Do not use the full web address

If you write a long http web address link like this:

• https://identity.west-midlands.police.uk/accessible-writing/

It would read out on a screen reader menu as:

• https colon forward slash forward slash www dot identity dot west hyphen midlands dot police dot uk forward slash accessible hyphen writing forward slash

If you had a long list of links that all read out in this way it would be very unhelpful.

How to write URLs and hyperlinks

Write out URLs and hyperlinks how you would say it. Use descriptive links. Such as:

• Our identity site has accessibility guidelines on how to layout content.

Buzzwords and jargon

Do not hide behind jargon, acronyms or corporate speak. We lose trust from people if we write police ‘buzzwords’ and jargon. Often, these words are too general and vague and can lead to misinterpretation or empty, meaningless text. We can do without these words.

If you must use a technical term, explain what you mean the first time you use it.

We’ve put together a list of words to avoid. The list is not exhaustive. It’s an indicator to show you the sort of language that confuses people.

Tabloid speak
We’re a professional government body here to provide a service. Our work speaks for itself without any hype or spin.

Hiding behind numbers
We’ve lots of great statistics well worth sharing, but they can make people switch off. Try not to always lead with statistics, for example, crime figures, detection rates, and number of officers. Instead lead with a message about WMP’s impact, or unique approach or how our hard work has resulted in something remarkable.

Egotism

We are proud and passionate. But pride can sound like arrogance. Our work is life changing so find opportunities to pull the audience in by explaining how our work benefits them.

Lols and winky faces

Hashtags, @s and emojis all have their place. And that’s social media. Don’t use them in any other communication.

Doing a half job

Be proud to show everyone that we are WMP by applying our voice and tone to all communications. Right down to forms, policies and other places where people will notice – and value – our personality the most.