Who we are
We’re not your old English teacher
It turns out grammar and punctuation are not the secrets to successful work documents, so that’s not our focus.
What’s needed is a much more practical approach, which is how we think about writing. We treat it like a lean manufacturing problem—how do we help writers find the most efficient way to create the best end product?
We set ourselves the task of cracking that code, and we succeeded.
About the company
We’re drawing on decades of experience
We started with a solid curriculum 40 years ago, and have refined and deepened it every year since. Countless people who work with us have contributed their professional strengths.
Our courses draw from our previous backgrounds in policy and strategy, law, engineering, marketing, journalism, the military, publishing, graphic design, academia, and more.
We’re keeners about what we do
We love thinking about writers and writing and solving tricky problems. This obsessiveness is why we have such superb curriculum. We take what we discover and turn it into principles we teach.
The spirit in which we do things . . .
We advocate for a direct, authentic, human style when we teach. And we use that same style to run our company. We work collaboratively when we teach and edit, and we have a sense of play in our work. We apply a healthy impatience with inefficiency even to our own internal processes. Our people bring in both their strengths and eccentricities because we do better work that way.
A few projects Wordsmith is behind
Utility bills everyone can understand
As part of an initiative of the Utility Consumer Advocate in 2011, we usability tested 14 Albertan utility bills. They got a 41% usability score. Oops. We designed and tested a new bill, which got a 98% usability score. We share the principles we developed in a style guide for utility companies to transform their own bills, which many of them did.
Land use bylaws that improve compliance
We help municipalities rewrite bylaws so they’re in plain language and more usable. This significantly reduces questions and increases compliance.
Plain language credit card agreements
We spent a whole summer redrafting 26 account and credit card agreements in plain language for one of the major banks so they agreements would comply with Canadian federal regulations.
Our company—like a good document—is the product of many drafts
Christine Mowat
Christine is a real, live plain-language pioneer. She founded Wordsmith in 1980 and built a program we still use today, drawing on her master’s thesis on the writing process. PLAIN, the international plain language association, has a lifetime achievement award in Christine’s name to recognize her outstanding contribution to the field.
Chari Smith
Christine hired Chari as an instructor in 1999 (Chari took an Effective Writing workshop and they got talking . . .). Chari fell in love with the breadth and complexity of the work and 11 years later, bought the company. She added a flood of new insights, content, and courses to the existing structure.
Sylvia Gackle
Sylvia joined the company in 2015, with a wave of commitment and energy that changed how we do business. She also brought on superb new staff. Sylvia has been running Wordsmith’s day-to-day operation since 2023. She and Chari now collaborate setting the direction of the company.
