18F/18f.gsa.gov

---
title: "Ask 18F — How do you tackle the problem of associating plain language to formal governmental terms?"
date: 2018-07-06
authors:
- cordelia-yu
tags:
- ask 18f
- content design
excerpt: "Ask 18F is an advice column that answers questions sent in by
federal employees. In this edition, we’ll talk about how to associate plain language to formal governmental terms "
image:
---

*Ask 18F is an advice column that answers questions sent in by federal
employees. Our technical experts aim to provide you helpful resources
and a good starting point to tackle your problem. Got a question? No
matter how small the task or how big the project, email us at
18f@gsa.gov.*

**Dear 18F: To help people search for data in their own words, we’re
looking to integrate plain-language synonyms for governmental
terminology. For example, “food stamps” for “SNAP”. Are you aware of any
existing synonym lists, word lists, dictionaries or similar that exist
in digital form today? How have you tackled the problem of associating
plain language to formal governmental terms?**

**Cordelia Yu - Content Designer**

I wish we had a giant list or thesaurus of plain language synonyms! That
would be a great tool to give folks who are joining new projects.
(Sometimes I wistfully talk about about adding one to the [TTS
Handbook](https://handbook.18f.gov/).) Since building a shared
dictionary for all of government would be an impossibly huge task, I’ve
started creating smaller ones for my team when joining a new project.
These documents are most successful when everyone is contributing, so
don’t let it live as a read-only page on your intranet. Put it somewhere
where everyone can add or update terms, like in a shared Google Sheet or
your project wiki, and then make sure you link to it in your shared
resources. Use the tools your team uses most often, an imperfect tool
that more people use often is better than a perfect tool that people
barely use.

If you’re [testing your
content](https://18f.gsa.gov/2016/04/19/looking-at-the-different-ways-to-test-content/) with users, watch for words and phrases that are confusing. Whenever a
new person joins your team, give them the glossary and have them ask you
whenever they encounter something new and add it to list.

But having and curating the list is only the first part. The second is
making useful content.

Teach your content creators (or editors) to use the plain-language and
common terms along with official terms so search engines know they are
related. This is an intentional practice that can take writers some time
to adjust to. One practice we have at 18F is a weekly workshop for the
content team to share things we’re working on for critique or
suggestions for improvement. This works really well when not everyone is
a subject matter expert because it means someone is coming with fresh
eyes to catch the things that aren’t obvious to folks who are closer to
the material.

If your content management system’s tagging system lets you create
synonyms, make sure they’re set up properly (if not, tag them with the
relevant common and plain language terms). You’ll also have to
periodically make sure to update the dictionary of synonyms in your
search engine. I wish there was a good way to get content management
systems to understand human documents, but this probably means that
you’re keeping two separate lists: a thesaurus for your content creators
and editors and a metadata table for your content management system and
search engine.

I wish there was a faster way to get to a good glossary, but by making
it a regular practice, you can use the collective wisdom of your whole
team to create something more comprehensive and useful than you can
alone.