Writing well is essential for communicating information in any field, especially in educational institutions like museums. However, with the wide range of roles museum professionals fill, it can be difficult to define what writing well means. What principles unite the diverse contexts museum people write in, whether drafting label copy, fundraising for a new exhibition, advertising on social media, or many others? How can we assess whether we’re developing the skills we need to future-proof our careers?

Despite the varying conventions and other surface-level differences between genres of museum writing, I believe there are core commonalities at the heart of all of them, which we can use as a beacon in aligning the nuances of our work to our institutions’ overall missions. To discover what these commonalities are, I interviewed museum professionals across the country about the values that guide their writing, and presented my research in a poster at this year’s AAM Annual Meeting. These are the core values I found that can make museum writing more effective.

Unity

Because there are so many genres of writing in the field, one of the most important principles for museum writers to embrace is unity. This means producing written information in a way that is cohesive not only for a particular institution but for museological principles in general. For instance, an institution using a style guide produces content that follows the same rules of writing across multiple departments. Writing in this way creates a central institutional voice that the broader public can latch onto. “I have to ‘be’ the institution, no matter how my day is going,” explains Lizabel Stell, the Senior Social Media and Digital Content Manager at the Blanton Museum of Art.

The trust readers put in museums as cultural institutions means that communication that comes from museums must be credible. This can be especially tricky in genres like marketing, where writers must balance this responsibility with conventions that place less emphasis on straightforward factuality. You wouldn’t expect to read a scholarly article in an Instagram caption, for example. No matter the genre, you must be cognizant of audience expectations in a particular context.

Practical examples:

• Using a style guide to unify the texts created by an institution.
• Targeting specific audiences to ensure that your writing is being presented to its intended readers.
• Understanding the purpose of your writing assignment to fit within the conventions of the specific genre in which you’re writing.

Accessibility

An emphasis on accessibility is another core tenet of museum work. Just as museums should design their physical spaces to serve the widest range of guests possible, they should also produce writing that is understandable to a wide range of audiences. This is especially important in the digital age, as access to written information has expanded to many more audiences than before. No group of people should be barred from knowledge because of wording that is confusing or too complex for them.

One factor to consider is age. As the Director of Smithsonian Associates, Fredie Adelman, told me, “Audiences range in age from pre-K to post-retirement.” This means we must keep multiple age ranges in mind and, when possible, tailor our writing to the age of the intended audience. We must also consider the range of abilities, such as the ability to see, hear, or process information, and make use of digital tools like alt text and captions that can improve accessibility. For all audiences, an effective strategy is succinctness, so we are conveying information as efficiently as possible.

Practical examples:

• Using alt text and other written descriptions for visual elements.
• Creating captions for visual or audio experiences.
• Selecting and creating age-appropriate texts to make it easier for your intended audience to come away with new knowledge.
• Making your writing succinct to transfer information in the most efficient way possible.

Human-Centeredness

One important element of museum writing that sometimes goes overlooked is telling the human stories that make our institutions possible. Being human-focused is an important aspect of museum work. For example, this could look like giving proper context to collection pieces. Even when visitors are looking at an artifact from hundreds of years ago, they should still be reminded of the humanity behind the object and how it can connect to their contemporary lives.

Making human connections to diverse groups of people is one of the most powerful functions of cultural institutions. This is the ideal that makes museum writers like John Epp, the Curator of the USS Slater, pursue the “number one goal of bringing a human element” in everything they write. When we tell stories through the lens of the people involved, we make it easier for audiences to connect with and understand them. Ultimately, this helps foster connections between the work of museums and the communities whose stories we steward.

Practical examples:

• Writing donor letters to demonstrate the impact that financial backers have in achieving the mission of your institution.
• Using interviews and other personal anecdotes of people or groups you are writing about to help tell their story in their own words.
• Doing research to ensure that the historical and contemporary stories you tell are authentic to audiences’ real-world experiences.

Conclusion

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak with various museum professionals from across the country to learn about the connections between their writing work and the core missions of museology. No matter which of the many genres under the banner “museum writing” we practice, it is important that the work we produce falls in line with these deeper ideals. They are some of the most important aspects of the field itself. Thinking through these deeper connections will make the writing we do more effective and help achieve the goal of communicating information in ways that are far-reaching and value-driven.

Editor’s note: A version of this post previously appeared on the Association of Midwest Museums blog.