Choosing our words carefully can help us to welcome, embrace and involve students. Equally, the wrong words could alienate people or put them off getting involved.
The language we use should be:
- Welcoming
- Supportive
- Informal
- Interesting
- Informed
- Jargon-free
- Straight-forward
- Trustworthy
- Acronym-free
By using a consistent tone of voice, we can create a sense of community. It’s not about having rules or judging individual writing styles, it’s about us all playing our part in ensuring coherent, clear messaging from the Students Association.
For more specific advice on the language and naming conventions we use, download our written style guide:
Download style guide
Tips
Remember your audience
What’s important to them? What would excite or help them? How much time do they have? Think of members you know and imagine them sitting right in front of you. Read it out, would you talk to that person like this?
Talk directly to students
Give you writing a personal, human touch. Instead of saying ‘The Students Association offer lots of opportunities to get involved’, say ‘you can get involved’. It’s more powerful to address your reader directly.
Use everyday English
Instead of: Use:
Additional extra
Advise tell
Students can you can
Commence start
Complete fill in
Ensure make sure
Forward send
In respect of for
On receipt when you get
On request if you ask
Purchase buy
Regarding about
Get to the point
Place your conclusion, or the main point right at the top, then use the rest of the space for any further detail. Studies show that people rarely read web pages word for word so you need to grab attention from the start.
Short is sweet
Break text up into really short paragraphs (even as short as one or two sentences), allowing only one real idea or subject per sentence.
Calls to action
Highlight any ‘calls to action’ using link text (or ideally buttons) and use active language. Avoid ‘click here’.
Avoid abbreviations and acronyms
Acronyms are a barrier to clear communication so we use them as little as possible.
The preferable approach is to spell out the acronym and then use an appropriate word to describe it later in the piece.
After taking advice from the Royal National Institute of Blind People and referring to Government websites, we do not space out acronyms (e.g. B B C) in the rare occasions they are used. We aim to only use very common acronyms which are recognisable to the general public – for example: BBC, OU and UK.
A notable exception is OUSET. The Open University Students Educational Trust can be referred to by an acronym after spelling out when first mentioned and the acronym in brackets afterwards.