A IN PLAIN WORDS case study

🔗 Live page

YMCA Canada - FAQs

📋 Sector

Non-profit / Community services

1. Context

The YMCA Canada FAQ is hard to use. It uses long, formal answers hidden in drop-down sections. People have to open each one and read big blocks of text before finding key warnings or advice. The reading level is too high, which makes it hard to find clear answers quickly.

2. Challenge

• High reading level: grade 11.2 makes it harder for most people to scan and absorb
• No quick answer: The key warning wasn’t up front, so people have to read the whole block before knowing what to do
• Passive voice: 16% passive sentences soften the warning and slow comprehension
• Dense text: too many words for a FAQ an not enough bullets

3. Approach

• Metrics audit: measured grade, word count, and passive-voice ratio
• Answer first: led with a clear rule: “It is likely a scam. …”
• Bullet structure: turned dense prose into concise lists
• Active voice: rewrote every passive sentence in active voice to boost clarity
• Readability tuning: rewrote for Grade 6–8 and confirmed with Flesch-Kincaid
• Shortened & focused: cut word count by over 30% to help readers find the answer in one glance