I always advocate that the text in an online course–whether it’s spoken by the narrator or read off the screen by the learner–is best thought of as a conversation between the narrator and a single learner. A conversational tone can still be concise and professional, and is much more engaging for the learner.

1) The words themselves 2) How the words look

Clive’s just dealt with the formatting of text and its interaction with other elements online. He’s also said something important about brevity and putting markers in text such as headings, bold type and colour for emphasis and to make skimming and scanning easier.

I’d like to add a word about tone, style, idiolect and register. What do the words you’ve written (or spoken) say about you and your reader or listener? What can they glean about your intentions or expectations, your beliefs or culture from the words you’ve chosen? What do they say about the relationship between you and them? Some have commented that you can read text on the lines, but you can also read above, between and beyond the lines.

Many presenters, tutors and facilitators struggle with words because they do not know, or cannot accept that the right tone to adopt is of spoken and not written language. This is especially difficult for people such as teachers, who spend a lifetime emphasising that written language is not the same as spoken language, and then find themselves in a dilemma. The art is of expressing yourself in active and not passive mood (subject – verb – object), in a style that is conversational and yet still grammatical. It comes through practice and feedback. Good old fashioned tools such as the FOG index can tell you about how readable your words are for audiences with a range of literacy levels. However as Clive suggests, trialling your text on a human ear is perhaps the best litmus test.