People Don’t Actually Hate Reading. They Hate Reading Confusing Things.

Be honest. You don’t read the user manual first. You try to do it yourself .

I don’t blame you.

Way too often, the instructions that come with putting things together (especially kids toys—why are there 847 pieces?) or setting things up are overly complicated, cluttered, and confusing.

The mark gets missed. A lot.

As a Technical Writer, I constantly find myself wishing I had the editable Word document so I could leave comments like:

“What does this even mean?”

And somehow, the only thing worse than overly complicated instructions are the ones with only pictures.

I said what I said.

As a girl who grew up on Tiger Beat, Seventeen, and J-14 (my age is showing a little), I realized some of my earliest memories of actually loving reading came from content that felt fun, easy to follow, and visually engaging.

Vanilla bean frappuccino in hand, obviously.

The taglines.

The quizzes.

The interviews.

The cheesy headlines.

None of it felt intimidating, confusing, or overwhelming. It felt digestible.

Believe it or not, people still crave that kind of communication in the workplace. Whether it’s internal process documentation, customer-facing support material, policies and procedures, or training content.

People want content that feels clear, approachable, and easy to consume.

I once had a stakeholder tell me:

“Thank you for making documentation fun.”

From then on, that became the goal.

Because without that human element, documentation gets ignored, pushed aside, and eventually forgotten.

People will read. They just want content that feels worth reading.