how to write a warning message

This comes from Jeannette Sutton’s post on LinkedIn. I thought it important enough to share it here with you. Remember the first place to really start off on the wrong foot in a disaster is to screw up the warning. Watch for an upcoming Disaster Zone Podcast on warnings with Dr. Sutton as the guest.

Jeannette Sutton, PhD

SOMETIMES WHEN WE READ WARNING MESSAGES WE FIND THAT THEY SHOUT EVERYTHING BY USING ALL CAPS FOR 360 CHARACTERS OF TEXT.

Perhaps unsurprising, but if you SHOUT THE ENTIRE TIME, it is difficult to read.

Now take a look at the first sentence that was in ALL CAPS and compare it to the second sentence that has SELECTIVE CAPS. Do you see the difference? Do you notice that in the second sentence your eyes are drawn to the places where the ALL CAPS stand in contrast with the rest of the text? Even in this paragraph, the words ALL CAPS and SELECTIVE CAPS stand out. Right?

In our new publication, we explore how writing messages using SELECTIVE ALL CAPS affects visual attention. We thought that we'd find that people's gaze would stop on those places with ALL CAPS; what we find instead is that they skim over those words but they RECALL them later. Odd right? And yet it gives us clues to how to write those messages that both draw visual attention as well as memory.

Take a look at our NOAA-VORTEX funded research that was just published in Weather, Climate, and Society. We're providing an open access version so that you can get it for free. https://lnkd.in/eW4ntGJM