Publications

Publication details [#19393]

Janssen, Daniël and Rob Neutelings, eds. 2001. Reading and Writing Public Documents. (Document Design Companion Series 1). John Benjamins. vi + 304 pp.

Publication type

Book – edited volume

Publication language

English

Keywords

bureaucratese | communicative efficiency

ISBN

90 272 3201 6

Annotation

Governments communicate with the public through all kinds of documents: forms, brochures, letters, policy papers, and so on. These public documents have an important role in any democracy and their design very much affects the efficiency with which governments can perform their tasks. This book gives an overview of various recurring problems in government-to-public communication, and provides suggestions for problem solving.

Articles in this volume

Janssen, Daniël and Rob Neutelings. Introduction. 1–9

Jansen, Carel and Michaël F. Steehouder. How research can lead to better government forms. 11–36

Renkema, Jan. Undercover research into text quality as a tool for communication management: The case of the Dutch tax department. 37–57

Jong, Menno de and Peter Jan Schellens. Optimizing public information brochures: Formative evaluation in document design processes. 59–83

Hulst, Jacqueline and Leo Lentz. Public documents in a multilingual context. 85–103

Janssen, Daniël. Improving the quality of public documents: Or: Why training public writers often doesn’t work. 105–124

Jansen, Frank. The lack of clarity in a sentence: The style of official documents in Dutch. 125–146

Hoeken, Hans. Convincing citizens: The role of argument quality. 147–169

Janssen, Daniël and Niels van der Mast. Collaborative writing for the government. 171–210

Mast, Niels van der and Daniël Janssen. Strategic revision of public documents: How policy writers revise documents in order to reach consensus. 211–232

Neutelings, Rob and H. Pander Maat. Trust but verify: Local suspensions of the cooperation principle in political communication. 233–254

Neutelings, Rob. Reading to assess in professional life: Reading styles of Dutch parliamentarians. 255–274