When you write manuals, you should ask yourself: what happens in the brain of the user that is reading them? We are forced to wait for the results of usability testing of the manuals to understand whether or writing is clear. But by that time the manual has already been written. How can we understand in advance how to write for that user?

Neuroscience research has confirmed the studies that led Robert E. Horn to conceive of the Information Mapping method in 1967: this is explained well in this article by Markus Reiter “Five lessons for brain-friendly writing” in Tcworld of October 2012. Let’s take a look

Words organized like in a grocery store

Have you ever wondered how our brains store words? Alphabetically? No, rather, it groups them just like products at the grocery store. That is, "Baked goods," "Vegetables," "Meats," and so on. So, if your brain is occupied, let’s say, in a certain section of the grocery store you will be ready to receive and produce all the works in that section. However, if you are asked for a word in another section of the grocery store, you might have trouble producing it.

Can this example be applied to an instruction manual? What might this suggest?

Concrete vs. abstract

Our brain saves abstract words in a separate compartment from concrete words. Looking at the grocery store example, what do you visualize when you read “Fruit”? What if you read "banana," or "pear" instead? How long did it take you to visualize the abstract word “fruit” and how long did it take you to visualize the concrete word “banana”?

Can this example be applied to a text describing a software application? What might this suggest?

Use familiar words

Our brain will rapidly scan familiar words, while it slows down and has doubts when faced with unknown words. It actually retraces its steps when faced with difficult words or complicated phrases, which is a disaster for users who have to learn to use a new object or an entire system!

In addition to storing words as images, how does the brain behave when faced with a strange, unknown word?

The author of the article also quotes an old thesis (see Rawlinson, G. E. 1976 “The significance of letter position in word recognition”. Unpublished PhD Thesis, Psychology Department, University of Nottingham, Nottingham UK) which attempts to demonstrate that words are perceived in the brain as images provided that the first and last letters are the same. However, on this matter, the discussion is ongoing.

Do we always try to apply these suggestions to our manuals? What does this mean for us writers? How can we know whether “those” words are familiar or unknown to our users?

Build clear sentences

This has always been my motto, which has gained strength with the advent of translation memories, which reward those who write using repetitive sentence structures (naturally based on the purpose of the sentence).

The brain acts before the reader does, filling in the end of a sentence. The shorter and clearer the sentence is, the quicker the message will arrive, with no “noise”. Thus, we apply the rules of Simplified Technical English!

Creating images in users' brains.

Texts can be image oriented and text oriented.

It has been found that image-oriented texts mainly impact the left hemisphere of the brain, the subjective hemisphere that hosts emotions and images.

Instead, text-oriented texts impact the right hemisphere, the rational, objective hemisphere which deals with systems and structures.

What does this mean for our manuals? If we want to evoke images and emotions, for example, in a brochure, we should tell a story or include a few verses of poetry, while if we want to specifically explain systems and structures, for example, in manuals, we are forced to get rid of our storytelling abilities and be schematic and more schematic.

Happy reading!