Content design Guides, templates and articles
Guides, templates and articles about content design, government communications, digital experience with a few case studies thrown in for fun.
Hidden verbs: the quiet bloat in government writing
Hidden verbs quietly bloat government writing. How to spot the pattern in phrases like 'make an application', and turn them back into verbs readers can act on.
Passive voice isn't a crime. It's usually just fog.
Passive voice has legitimate uses in government writing. The problem is the fog it creates everywhere else. How to spot it, fix it and learn when to keep it in.
Your content reads at year 12. Your readers are at year 7.
Most government content is written three reading levels above its audience. Why year 7 is the Style Manual's target, and how to know where your pages now stand.
Why's it called Confetti?
Confetti is named after what you see on screen: a page in 8 colours, one per kind of problem. Why that mess is the work, and what that name obliged us to build.
Confetti flags. You decide.
A checker can prove your page is mechanically spotless. It cannot know if the page works. How to use Confetti, its flags and its checklist, with real judgement.
The Digital Inclusion Standard is not an accessibility job. Content owns part of every criterion.
The Digital Inclusion Standard covers every existing public-facing government service. What each of the five criteria asks, and the share content teams own.
What your privacy policy must say about automated decisions
From 10 December 2026, privacy policies must describe significant automated decisions. It is a transparency rule, and it will fail without content design.
Using AI in government content: what to try, and what to leave alone
A model shows you what your content does. It cannot decide what it should say. What to try, what to leave alone, and what decides whether it works.
Plain language does not fail at the draft. It fails after launch.
Government writers are not the problem. Readability fails after launch, because no role owns the whole site. Here are the four roles that fix it.
Agentic AI does not read your content. It acts on it.
The DTA has named website information as an input to AI systems that take actions. Four things to check in your content before an agent points at your site.
What to measure instead of a readability score
A readability score measures sentence length, not whether readers can act. Plain language vs a readability score, why they differ, and what to test instead now.
What the Digital Access Standard means for content teams
The Digital Access Standard makes one architecture decision documented and reported: does this service need its own front door? Content teams hold the evidence.
Content design training in Australia: the five things UK-built courses leave out
Content design training in Australia largely descends from UK GDS courses. Five things Australian government content work needs that imported courses leave out.
How to do a content audit without tools: a spreadsheet, 50 pages, and one question
You can do a content audit without tools. A spreadsheet, your top 50 pages by traffic, and one sharp question lands most of the decisions any audit has to make.
How to write evaluation recommendations that get actioned
Writing evaluation recommendations that get actioned means naming the owner, the action, and the date. Without those three, it is only an observation.
Information architecture vs sitemap: what the difference means for government websites
Information architecture vs sitemap: a sitemap lists the pages you publish; IA is how people find and understand them. Confusing the two breaks your navigation.
Content management vs content governance: what the difference means for Australian government teams
A CMS publishes content. Content governance decides who is accountable for it. Why Australian government teams keep confusing the two, and how to close the gap.
Accessibility overlays will not make your government website compliant
Accessibility overlays will not make a government website WCAG 2.2 or DDA compliant. The AHRC now says so. The real fix is content design, not a bolt-on widget.
Content design vs UX writing vs content strategy: the disciplines, the overlaps, the differences
Content design vs UX writing vs content strategy: what each discipline actually does, where they overlap, and why naming them right saves teams time and budget.
How to measure content design impact when there's no baseline
Measuring content design impact without a baseline: pick one defensible measure, record the diagnostic state precisely now, and your first number is the before.