35. Kind and clear Newsletter

Welcome to another edition of the Clear Language Club newsletter, still sent to you by Iain Broome, which is also me.

Since I last emailed you, I have taken part in a very long bicycle ride and had my gall bladder removed. I can't recommend the latter experience, to be honest. Easily outside my top 40 experiences of the year so far.

Thank you for all the nice messages about the Clear Language Club blog. I've been posting regularly. Remember, you can subscribe to the RSS feed if you want to get the goodies without regular check ins.

Enjoy the following content feast.

Iain

Good content

How screen readers use headings to make table content accessible

I've been working in table land the last couple of months and expect more of the same over the summer. Tables are hard, especially when you are designing with a lot of data. This is a good video intro that explains how screen readers 'read' table headings.

Use of tense when referring to death

Excellent post on writing about death by Lizzie Cass-Maran. I added some of my own reflections from my time working at the Infected Blood Compensation Authority. Basically, it can be very difficult and sometimes it feels like there are no options that are both kind and clear. But this is what you are aiming for. And I just love those two words as fundamentals of good content design.

Intuit's guidance on anti-racist language

First, Intuit has an excellent, detailed style guide that is worth a browse. Also, this page on anti-racist language includes several statements of intent, followed by a useful list of terms with racist roots to avoid.

7 things you may not know about web accessibility

Good web accessibility intel from Andrew Tipp at Suffolk County Council. It includes the seemingly obvious but often overlooked reality that accessible content is better for everyone.

How to write error messages

Great tips on writing error messages in the Readability Guidelines. I've just spotted the Guidelines site is due to close down next month, so go grab your excellent content advice while you can.

3 tools I use

Here are 3 handy tools that I use every day when I'm going about my content business. I use a Mac, but I've included a Windows equivalent for the first one.

Cleanshot

Cleanshot is the best tool for taking and sharing screenshots, something I do sometimes multiple times a day. It has a great editor, which allows you to annotate your image or add a neat background before you share it.

Cleanshot is also a very good screen recording tool, though I rarely use it for that (see Descript below). If you sign up the cloud service, you can even collect a library of saved screenshots if that's what you're into.

Lightshot looks similar for Windows users.

TextExpander

I've used TextExpander for as long as I can remember. It allows you to create keyboard shortcuts for text that you use regularly. For example, your email or web address. Maybe the organisation you work for. Or even a stock paragraph that you are sick of copying and pasting over and over again.

TextExpander has added lots of features over the years. It's pretty powerful, especially if you enjoy tinkering away to try and save as much time as possible. And the good news, it's available across platforms, including mobile.

Descript

Descript is a video editor, audio editor and screen recorder all in one. But it has magic sauce. It transcribes an audio or video file into a text document. Then when you edit that text document, the audio and video are edited too. I've used it to make 100+ documentary episodes of a cycling podcast. And it's my go-to app whenever I want to do a quick content demo to share with the team.