Do you put punctuation marks inside quotation marks or outside them? 

It depends:

• whether the punctuation mark belongs to the quote
• where the quote appears in the sentence.

The punctuation mark goes inside the closing quotation mark when it belongs to the quote.

Write in a positive, affirming way, unless research shows there’s a good reason not to.

When you ask people to do something, they are more likely to respond to a positive sentence. You will also use fewer words. Positive sentences are often shorter than their negative counterparts.

A lot of what we write in the APS asks someone to make a decision or do something. Our readers are often very short of time. Don’t make them read a lot of writing before they find out why they are reading it.

A good start is to ask 2 questions:

• What do I want my readers to think, feel or do?
• What information will make that as easy as possible?

The answers to these questions should be clear and at the beginning of your document.

We thank the following for their contribution to the handbook:

Review your writing effectively

Footy teams review every aspect of a weekend game and ‘talk about it during the week’. Writing is no different. Review what you’ve written and, ideally, get others to check it too.

Understand your writing tics

With a little self-knowledge, a self-edit can start at the first draft. We all have writing tics. They’re the style habits we pick up and use unconsciously when writing. Granted, they can put the ‘you’ into writing and save it from being drearily bland. But it’s also possible your tics will: 

Accessibility is about writing and designing content for equal access. Government agencies must produce accessible content.

Equal access to government services and information is an obligation under Australian law (e.g. the Disability Discrimination Act 1992).

WCAG and user needs

WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) is the baseline accessibility standard for all Australian Government digital content.

We can describe WCAG in terms of user needs:

Structural elements are signposts for readers. Before they read your paragraphs, people will scan headings, tables, lists, images and links.

A successful structure supports:

• navigation
• readability
• understanding
• assistive technologies.

Let’s focus on bullet lists. They are everywhere in government writing, and
mastering their style will set you free. Well, it will help you to be consistent at least.

Using plain language benefits everyone. It builds trust, improves comprehension and makes content accessible for more people.

Using plain language is not ‘dumbing down’ your writing – it’s opening it up. Using plain language lessens the cognitive load for all readers. This includes people with high literacy levels who are time-poor and have a lot to read.

Few people get excited at the thought of grammar. Often, it’s seen as a boring set of rules that isn’t relevant to everyday life.

Despite this, grammar is a vital part of written and verbal communication. It shapes how we use words. Most importantly, grammar determines how people process and react to those words.

Grammar is about your readers

There are strong reasons for paying attention to grammar in your writing.

Good grammar respects your readers and their time. It shows them that you’ve made an effort to write something they can understand quickly.

Writing is a skill that gets better with practice. Like any skill, there are ways of working that help you to improve faster.

Get started and keep going

A blank page waiting to be filled with words can be very scary. Equally scary is running out of words halfway through writing something.

Editing text is usually easier than writing it. So, your first step is to come up with words to edit. Here are 2 approaches.

Jump straight in: