Abstract art featuring swirling shades of blue, white, and gold.

How we customize

A vertical infographic illustrating a workshop process with five steps. The steps include 'Tailor the workshop,' 'We meet with you to discuss your group's challenges and goals,' 'You send us a series of representative documents,' 'We analyze your documents and look for common patterns,' 'We customize our manual using excerpts from your documents,' 'We give each participant a tailored package of materials,' and 'Deliver customized content.' The first step is highlighted with blue text and icons.

We tailor our content to your organization, team, and documents

Learn more deeply with content that’s relevant to your work

We help participants build stronger skills by:

  • analyzing your documents for common patterns, both useful and not-so-useful

  • adapting our curriculum based on your document types and culture

  • delivering content and tools specific to the patterns we found

  • creating before-and-after examples from your documents to model plain language principles

Gold quotation marks icon

I appreciated the tailoring of the workshop materials to our organization, using real-time, current writing examples to analyze and improve. It was readily applicable to my work and very professionally done.”

—The Civilian Complaints and Review Commission

Here’s one example of customized content

Each participant receives a customized package including a manual that looks like this and a desk-side summary of core principles.

Examples of excerpts we use as exercises

In a workshop, participants discuss the “before” examples and apply what we teach to produce the “after” examples.

  • Before

    26 words

  • After

    11 words

  • Before

    48 words

  • After

    33 words

  • Before

    51 words

  • After

    50 words

  • Before

    32 words

  • After

    13 words

Participants bring it all together in a longer exercise

This is an example we use in our investigation and decision-writing workshops.

We teach writers a series of steps from the “before” to the “after.” The resulting document:

  • is much more concise

  • has stronger relationships between findings and evidence

  • is more readable and persuasive

  • is faster for writers to draft and easier for reviewers to refine

Before—Decision

A printed case report document from the Advertising Standards Board, dated November 201X, concerning a complaint about a SuperCheap Auto ad. The report includes sections on the case details, issues raised, advertisement description, response from the advertiser, and the board's conclusion.

After—Decision

Letter from the Advertising Standards Board addressed to Daffy Duck discussing an investigation into a truck racing video advertisement. The letter concludes that the advertisement promotes unsafe driving and violates community standards, but does not promote dangerous driving or unsafe driving behavior in real environments.
A large gold quotation mark graphic.

I will have the handbook on my desk whenever I am writing. The course was a good balance of practical, overarching principles, and practice.”

—Alberta Education

Golden quotation marks

I appreciated the tailoring of the workshop materials to our organization, using real-time, current writing examples to analyze and improve. It was readily applicable to my work and very professionally done.”

—The Civilian Complaints and Review Commission

Golden quotation marks.

You’re not saying, “you should use this word rather than another word.” You put evidence right in front of us in a paragraph where we can see that something is better. It’s incredibly impressive.

—Ombudsman for Banking Services and Investments