6 simple ways to make your intranet content more readable

If in-house readership is down, it might be due to a few simple stylistic issues—not the quality of your writing. Make a few of these simple formatting fixes and see whether readership improves.

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If your intranet is difficult to use, your organization’s bottom line will suffer.

However, there is another component of intranet usability that many communicators don’t consider: your content’s appearance.

Can people easily read and process your content, or do they give up and watch the latest “Star Wars” trailer for the umpteenth time instead?

The dreaded wall of text

Almost everyone can say that at one time or another, while searching for information, they’ve encountered a wall of text—a page of content that seems to scroll forever. There’s paragraph after paragraph with no differentiation—no headers, lists, links, bolded words or anything to give the reader any indication of hierarchy or importance.

The wall of text sort of looks like the opening credits of “Star Wars,” except there’s no movie that follows. It’s just a text crawl that goes on forever.

Of course the author thinks it’s all important information, but I have news for you: Your intranet users won’t read every word you write.

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