[laugh]

I got something from the City, a tax bill, and I thought they were saying I owed a whole bunch of money and I had to phone them and they assured me that I didn't. But I understand--I don't lease cars, so I don't have your experience, but, yeah, Michelle, sometimes it's pretty... I guess in a way they wanted to share all of the information that is new to you, but if they don't make it clear what it's all about or how seriously they take it, then you could be confused as Cathy is.

Yeah, that happens a lot in--much of my experience has been in working in the hospital sector and there's that same issue of there are so many different people who have different I guess stakes in different parts of that information and it all needs to get into the contract or the instruction or whatever. And then again the reader doesn't know What is the piece that applies to me right away? What is the piece that's never going to apply to me, or might almost never apply to me but I need to know it?

And so, like you said, you get these big long reams of paper and then sometimes you find out, as well, that the stuff you most needed to know *didn't* get in there. And that sometimes is a system issue in terms of who's preparing that information. Often when I do plain language writing I don't only look at the one piece of information someone is preparing, but also who else in the organization might need to use or be affected by that information? Also, who might have to answer to this? Then I try to come to some common understanding there, because otherwise it just becomes what's known as "Death by Committee," where everybody's gotta get a little piece of a disclaimer or rule or whatever in there, and then the reader is left with pages and pages of stuff, and where they're not able to make sense of what's most important to them and also, of course, what can happen to them if they disregard it or don't follow certain instructions?

This is one of the strongest arguments I've heard for *not* sending out notices to people after, say, they've had a hospital stay to let them know how much their care cost, because I've heard people say there's a concern that people will think it's a bill and they have to pay it. And I always thought they should put in big, block letters at the top: This is not a bill; it's just for your information. But maybe it doesn't work that way. I don't know whether you've come across that particular suggestion Michelle. It's been suggested as a way of controlling health care costs, to let people know how much what they're using is costing.

Right, right. Again, it's just a matter of--like you said Dave--really clearly indicating what the purpose of that information is at the very top. We had a similar example shown this weekend at the conference, but it was quite the opposite. It was from the Canadian government, where there was a letter going out to them saying "You're eligible to apply for the Guaranteed Income Supplement, and here's how to do it." And what happened was there were tons and tons of people who didn't know that they were eligible for this thing, and had gotten this four page document with its small type about how to apply, but didn't realize that the government was saying "You know what? You could have this if you wanted it. And let's make it easier for you to apply." People just wouldn't bother, because they didn't understand that they were entitled to that. The information they'd gotten with it was just so intimidating and made them think "What's going to happen if I actually apply for this?" And so in the rewrite, I think the original had started with three or four pages, and the rewrite was just a short letter, which started by saying "We want you to know that you are eligible for this, and here are three steps of how to apply for it." And then, perhaps after they've done that maybe you can send them all the information about sort of the different situations that can arise etc.

So it has to do with, also as I mentioned before, how you visually design and organize the information? You could be saying all they need to know, but what does the *user* need to know first--not what do you want to tell them first?