Most instructional design best practices include carefully curated writing principles, and for good reason. Both what you write and how you write it directly impact learners’ interaction, perception, and retention of the material.

And today, because of the ever-expanding culture of busyness, learners are—or at least feel—busier than ever. What and how you write has never been more crucial for effective instructional design.

Writing for busy readers

In a recent issue of our Abstract newsletter, we shared an interview featuring Todd Rogers, coauthor of Writing for Busy Readers. This interview was one of our most-clicked resources, demonstrating a common desire for more and better techniques for effective L&D writing. In the book, Rogers and Jessica Lasky-Fink outline the following six principles of writing for busy readers:

• Less is more.
• Make reading easy.
• Design for easy navigation.
• Use enough formatting but no more.
• Tell readers why they should care.
• Make responding easy.

Inspired by these principles, we’re sharing our principles around writing for busy learners, drawing on our existing instructional design best practices, our wealth of experience, and the four core Learning Principles that drive everything we do.

Keep your complexity in check

“The biggest mistake is that we think that our job is to write well when our job is actually to write effectively, which means writing in a way that makes it easy for the reader. Everything flows from that.” —Writing for Busy Readers: Communicate More Effectively in the Real World

Clear is kind, and it’s also efficient. The easier it is for learners to read your content, the more likely they’ll be to stick with it. Don’t bog learners down with unnecessary expository or introductory information. Keep words simple, sentences short, and points succinct.

One metric that will keep complexity in check is reading level. The ideal level will depend on your audience, but at Maestro, we typically aim for an eighth-grade reading level for instructional content. There are a variety of online tools for evaluating the reading level of your writing, from Google Docs add-ons (we like WriteClearly) and MS Word features to websites like Hemingway Editor.

Be inclusive

Accessibility and inclusivity are key ingredients for effective instructional design. Here are some best practices for writing for all your busy learners:
Reduce insider language (unless all learners are familiar with and confident in that language).

• Use gender-neutral pronouns.
• Avoid words that have sexist, racist, ableist, or other discriminating connotations.
• Avoid navigation words that don’t apply to all learners and all learning devices—words like click, look, and see. Opt for words such as select, consider, and review instead.

Remember our previous tip for writing at an appropriate reading level for your audience? Not only will doing so ensure your writing is easy to understand, but it’ll also make it accessible to a wider audience, including ESL (English as a second language) learners. It’s a win-win.

Proofread (and then proofread again)

Even the best writing needs a proofread, so don’t skip this step. Grammar violations, typos, and punctuation—extra or errant—might distract or derail your learners. Online grammar-checkers are growing in popularity, but use them with caution. They can introduce errors as fast as they clean them up. The best route is to keep the human element in the mix, checking the AI’s work along the way. Even better than doing your own proofread, ask a trusted colleague to review your final draft. Our instructional design team schedules peer proofreads at multiple milestones of every project:

• After the storyboard final draft
• After the alpha design (when the storyboard is designed out in the authoring tool)
• After the final stage of design, just before delivery to the client

The first proofread is assigned to a writer other than the one who wrote the storyboard. The storyboard writer, though, tackles the second proofread. And the final proofread falls to the project manager, who has context for the content but isn’t as close to it as the writer or visual designer.

Write with the learner in mind

“Whatever the most important idea is, don’t leave it implicit. Make it very explicit. Don’t leave it implicit why the reader should care about what you’re saying.” —Writing for Busy Readers: Communicate More Effectively in the Real World

At all stages of the writing process, keep the learner’s “why” top of mind: Why should the learner care? What goal(s) will participating in this learning experience help them achieve? How will it make their lives better? Communicating a meaningful what’s in it for me (WIIFM) for your learners might sound easy enough, but doing so well requires you to truly understand your learner audience.

Consider conducting a Learning Environment Analysis to ensure that you truly understand your learners—who they are, where they are in their learning path, how they learn, and what they need. This is the time to ask as many practical questions as you can. What type of device(s) will learners use to engage with the material? What distractions will they be up against? What do they already know? The knowledge you gather during this phase is critical to how you approach writing for your learners.

Learner research also gives you the information you need to make your writing relevant and relatable. For example, if your writing speaks the learners’ language—using relevant industry terms or company language while straying away from unfamiliar terms or unclear jargon—they’ll be more likely to embrace the material.

Don’t make it easy—make it effective

While clarity and simplicity are essential instructional design best practices, be careful not to water down or oversimplify your content. Incorporating challenging (but achievable) knowledge checks in your instructional design strategies is a great way to achieve the delicate balance between simplicity and significance. Most learners want to be challenged—they want to feel like they’re successfully absorbing new and useful information, even if the content is difficult. If they view the subject matter as too easy, they may discredit it or simply tune out.

Great writing yields great learning

Sure, learners are busier than ever—and getting them to engage with and retain learning material is a constant challenge. But by sticking to intentional instructional design strategies, you can succeed in capturing learners’ attention and making a meaningful impact. Be clear, correct, and inclusive in how you write. And remember, the more you know your learners, the more your writing will resonate, so do your research and keep it relevant.

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to writing for busy learners. But sticking to tried-and-true instructional design best practices will provide the right foundation for reaching your learners—however busy they may be.