What government content design taught me about writing for people who do not want to be there

Government content starts from a worse assumption about the reader

Public-sector content design assumes the reader does not want to be there.

Someone applying for benefits, paying tax or checking healthcare guidance did not choose you. They may be stressed, short of time, using a phone on a bad connection, or reading something that decides whether they can pay a bill. They owe you no attention and no goodwill.

I think that assumption is the single most useful thing to take from government work into commercial content. Most business writing assumes an interested reader with time to spare. That reader exists, but they are not the one who decides whether your content works.

Commercial content usually gets the softer assumption and the harder audience. Your reader has a choice, which means the cost of confusing them is that they leave.

The worst-day test

This is the test I run on any page, mine or a client's. Assume the reader is tired, rushed, doubtful and interrupted. Then ask whether the page still does its job.

Question	Passes when	Fails when
Can they tell in one screen whether this page is for them	The first heading and first sentence name the problem or the task	The page opens with the company, the mission or a slogan
Can they get the one fact they came for without reading the page	Price, eligibility, timescale or scope has its own heading or line	The fact is embedded mid-paragraph, or is absent
Do the headings match the questions they arrived with	Headings are phrased as the reader's task, not your internal structure	Headings name your departments, services or content types
Do they know what happens next, before they commit time	The stages are stated in order, with what you need from them	The next step is a form with no explanation of what follows
Would they still understand it if they read only 30% of the words	Meaning survives skimming, because the important words sit at the start of headings and sentences	Meaning depends on reading every sentence in sequence

If a page fails on 2 or more rows, it is not finished. The test does not require research, a budget or anyone's permission, which is why I still use it 10 years after I stopped writing for government.

It is a screening tool, not a substitute for user research. It tells you where a page is likely to fail. It does not tell you what your readers need, which is a separate question I have written about in user needs versus what users ask for.

The government content design principles that carry over

The UK government publishes 11 design principles. They govern services rather than marketing content, and most businesses cannot use them as written. Four of them survive the move to commercial work without much adjustment.

Start with user needs. GOV.UK guidance defines content design as taking a user need and meeting it in the best way possible, where a need is something the reader has to do or find out. That is a stricter definition than most content briefs use, because it forces you to name the reader's task before you choose a format.

Do the hard work to make it simple. The effort belongs with the writer. If the page is hard to write, that is the work, and passing the difficulty to the reader only moves the cost.

This is for everyone. Content that only works for people who already know your sector is content that filters your audience by prior knowledge.

Understand context. The same words perform differently on a phone, in a hurry, or when the reader is anxious about the outcome.

Do less is the principle I find hardest to sell commercially. A business usually wants to add a page. The equivalent discipline for a small site is deciding what to retire, which I have covered in the content lifecycle nobody plans for.

Rebuilding a recruitment site around applicants

When I took over the website for a devolved legislature, the recruitment section was making HR do work the content should have handled.

Each vacancy brought calls and emails asking the same basic questions. How do I apply. What happens after I submit. What is it like to work here. The answers existed somewhere, but not where applicants needed them.

The section had been shaped by its content management system rather than by its applicants. The system was locked down: staff could not change layouts, add visuals or restructure pages without a developer. So the easiest option was always to add more text to a page that already existed.

Job listings became dense blocks. The application process sat on one long page. There was nothing useful about the organisation, its people or what working there involved. An applicant had to assemble their own picture from fragments.

That excluded people before they decided whether to apply. Someone already inside the civil service could fill in the gaps from experience. Someone from outside it had less context and more reasons to leave.

I started with research into who was applying, who was not, and where people stopped. Then I mapped the journey from seeing a job advertised on social media through to submitting an application. That exposed the problem with treating recruitment as a set of pages. An applicant moves from a post, to a role, to a question about eligibility, to the form.

We rebuilt the content around that sequence. Each role got a clearer job page. Listings used headings and short sections instead of long paragraphs. The process guidance explained what would happen, in plain English, before anyone reached the form. We added what people needed to make a decision: what the organisation did, what its values meant in practice, and what working there looked like. Social posts became part of the route into the site rather than an afterthought.

The content management system did not change. The content design did.

What I can and cannot claim about the outcome

Before the rebuild, HR fielded repeated calls and emails for every vacancy about process questions the pages should have answered. After it, the team told me those queries had largely stopped.

I did not measure that. No baseline was recorded, no call volumes were logged before or after, and no test isolated the content changes from everything else happening in that recruitment cycle. Treat it as a first-hand account of what the team reported, not as a result.

The same limit applies to the second thing I was told, which is that applications arrived better informed. That was the recruiting team's judgement of application quality. It was not scored against a rubric, and I have no figure for it.

I am fairly confident the direction is right, because the questions people were phoning to ask were the exact questions the new pages answered. I would not present it as evidence of an effect size.

Clear beats on-brand, and plain English is not dumbing down

Government work taught me to be suspicious when brand language sits between a reader and a simple answer.

Your voice matters. It helps the right people recognise themselves in what you say. It cannot carry information the reader cannot find.

If someone lands on a job page, they should not have to decode a slogan before they can see the salary, the responsibilities or how to apply. If someone wants to buy from you, they should not read 3 paragraphs about your mission before they learn what you sell.

The usual objection is that plain English talks down to a professional audience. The evidence points the other way. GOV.UK's guidance on clear language records that 1 in 6 adults in England have very poor literacy skills, and that readers with higher literacy prefer plain English because it lets them understand the information faster. It also cites research on legal documents in which 80% of people preferred sentences in clear English, with the preference increasing as the issue became more complex.

Specialists are not reading your page for pleasure. They are reading it to make a decision, which is the same reason everybody else is reading it. There is more on that in plain English as a conversion tactic.

I still see businesses hide useful information behind polished language. A service page promises tailored solutions without saying what is included. A contact form asks for a detailed brief without saying whether the business is taking new work. An about page claims care and quality with no example of either. That is a comprehension problem wearing a branding costume.

When your reader has a choice

Having a choice is not a reason to make content more elaborate. It is a reason to make it easier to leave with confidence.

Most businesses want content that keeps people on the page. I would rather it helped the right people decide. If your content makes your offer clearer, some readers will conclude you are not for them, and that is a good outcome for both of you. Part of why the recruitment site worked better is that it gave people enough information to opt out of a role that did not fit, before they spent an evening on the application.

That is the discipline I brought out of the public sector. Write for the person who does not know your internal language, does not have time to hunt for the answer, and will leave if you make them work for it. Content that helps that person also helps the reader who arrived enthusiastic.

Run the worst-day test on your services page this week. If it fails on the first row, fix the opening screen before you write anything new. For the wider case, see how content design solves user needs.