Innovation Day 2019
February 16th, is Innovation Day.
At skritswap we live innovation with our product development.
And we are sponsoring an innovation award with the Plain Language Association International (PLAIN). We’ll announce the first recipient at the international conference in Oslo this September 2019.
The award honours the long and valuable services of our plain language expert Cheryl Stephens, who founded PLAIN in 1993.
Plain Language has history of innovative developments
The plain language movement has been in motion since the days of Maury Maverick condemning gobbledegook.
Karen Schriver recently recounted the important changes that may have slipped by us unnoticed:
“Plain language evolved over the past 75 years from a sentence-based activity focused on readability of paper documents to a whole-text-based activity, emphasizing evidence-based principles of writing and visual design for paper, multimedia, and electronic artifacts.
“Plain-language practitioners expanded their concerns from how people understand the content—the usability and accessibility of the content—to whether people trust the content.”
Karen A Schriver, Plain Language in the Us Gains Momentum: 1940–2015IEEE Transactions On Professional Communication, Vol. 60, No. 4, December 2017
Innovation is more than technological advances
Technological and scientific advances have made it possible to improve our advice on achieving clear communication. We now know more about how people read, how their brains process information, and the cognitive biases affecting that.
Innovation is not solely about technology. Cross-fertilization also creates innovation. Innovations came to plain language thanks to those from related fields who shared their knowledge and introduced us to their techniques.
Nominate someone for the Cheryl Stephens Award for Innovation
Consider how your own or another’s initiative has driven innovation in clear communications. See whether it fits with the criteria for PLAIN’s Cheryl Stephens Award for Innovation:
- Technology – adapting emerging technology to develop new services and systems
- Advocacy – extending the scope and influence of plain language internationally
- Research – strengthening the knowledge base for plain language
- Professional Development – helping to develop the skills of plain language practitioners and the institutions supporting them.
New info from PLAIN: