You can reduce confusion or misinterpretation for all readers without sacrificing the technical integrity of your writing.

Documents such as learning guides present special challenges because of the technical information they contain.   At the same time, you have a wide range of readers - some highly knowledgeable, some less so. 

• Use short sentences

• Use the simplest tense that you can - a document written in the present tense is more immediate and less complicated

• Use 'must' to convey requirements (rather than 'should' or 'shall')

• Avoid ambiguous placing of words eg. “If you are determined to be eligible, you can receive…”

• Avoid words and constructions that can confuse (define acronyms, avoid jargon)

• Think about how you use contractions eg. 'don't' instead of 'do not' (Contractions soften the tone and make documents easier to read, and the two word form is more emphatic and formal)

• Change nominalisations to verbs eg. "We made an application" to "We applied"

• Bring abstractions down to earth with examples or diagrams

• Omit superfluous words eg. change "despite the fact" to "although"