Don’t Scare Your Readers: Five Tips for a Friendly Voice

October 26, 2011 • By Dan Hinmon, Principal

I fell in like with Meredith Gould, Ph.D., for her voice.

That was before I ever spoke with her. The voice I admired was in her tweets. I loved her friendly, conversational style – like this one she tweeted yesterday following our phone interview:

Gould is an author (seven books!) and social media trailblazer who has been named one of 11 social media faces to follow by Fierce Health IT.

I’ve been following her on Twitter for awhile and met her at the Mayo Ragan Third Annual Health Care Social Media Summit last week. Yesterday I called her for some pointers on developing a friendly healthcare voice.

People are already nervous

“When people search for healthcare information it’s usually because they have something, they think they have something, or they know someone who has something,” she explains. “So they’re already nervous. Formal, authoritative or authoritarian language is going to scare them.”

Instead, Gould says, “the friendlier the text can be, the more accessible, the better off everyone is.”

Here are Gould’s specific tips for friendly – yet efficient – writing.

Use the active voice

Avoid phrases like “we have known that…” Turn it all to active. Strip out the “to be” language and move into action verbs.

Use contractions

Do a universal search-and-replace for words you can turn into contractions. Instead of “we will,” say “we’ll.” That immediately brightens it up. Sometimes I will send copy back to someone where I’ve just done that and they’ll say, “This is great. What did you do?”

Replace “which” with “that”

Search for every instance of the word “which.” I usually replace “which” with “that.” Then I search for the word “that” and I usually take it out, because it’s usually not needed.

Remove “the”

Search for the word “the.” If it’s not a modifier that absolutely makes sense and is absolutely necessary, take it out.

Look for phrases like “in order to”

I take out things like “in order to” and change it to “to.” Strike out “in order.”

Format shorter paragraphs 

If you’re writing for the web, you’ll see it on screen. I reformat it and put in a lot more paragraphs. With online content, it’s okay to have one sentence paragraphs.

When we were done with the interview, I went onto our Hive Strategies website and started removing the “that”s. Turns out it’s been one of my favorite unnecessary words.

And there’s more. Check back next week for friendly tips on length, leads and kickers.

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Tags: Fierce Health IT, Meredith Gould