Page updated October 8th, 2026

By the Health Within Reach Editorial Team

An Emergency Notice Uses Hard-to-Read Language: A Plain-Language Rewrite Check

If an emergency notice on your door, phone, or mailbox is full of technical terms, long sentences, or unclear instructions, start by identifying exactly which parts are unclear before you act. Read the notice twice: once for the deadline and required action, and once for anything you don’t understand. If you can’t find both a clear action and a clear deadline on a second read, the notice has a plain-language problem, not just a “you” problem.

Why Emergency Notices Are Often Hard to Read

Emergency notices are frequently written by agencies, utilities, or officials under time pressure, and they often carry over legal or technical language from other documents. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) defines personal health literacy as the degree to which a person can find, understand, and use information to make informed decisions, and it defines organizational health literacy as the responsibility organizations share to make that information usable in the first place. That second part matters here: if a notice is unclear, the gap is not automatically the reader’s. CDC lists plain language, communicating in the audience’s preferred language and channels, and using culturally and linguistically appropriate wording as three of its core recommended practices for organizations trying to close that gap.

The U.S. federal government’s own plain language standard, maintained through digital.gov and PlainLanguage.gov, defines plain language as communication a reader can understand the first time they encounter it. Federal agencies are required to follow this standard under the Plain Writing Act of 2010 for many public-facing documents, though enforcement and scope vary by document type and agency, and not every notice you receive is guaranteed to meet it.

The Notice Clarity Card: A Five-Point Check

The CDC built a 20-item tool called the Clear Communication Index specifically to evaluate whether a public communication is clear enough for a general audience. It groups its criteria into four areas: core language and organization, clear behavioral guidance, plain presentation of numbers, and plain presentation of risk. You do not need all 20 items to check a single notice in front of you. Below is a five-point reader tool adapted from the same categories, built to be used in a few minutes on any physical or digital emergency notice.

1. Is the required action named in one sentence? Look for a single sentence that tells you exactly what to do (evacuate, boil water, shelter in place, call a number, fill out a form). If the action is buried in a paragraph or split across several conditional clauses, that is a clarity failure under CDC’s “behavioral guidance” criteria, which call for direct, explicit instructions rather than implied ones.
2. Is there a specific deadline or time window? A plain-language notice states a date, time, or clear window (“by 6 p.m. Thursday,” “within 48 hours”). Vague timing (“as soon as possible,” “promptly”) does not meet this standard and is worth flagging or calling to clarify.
3. Are technical or legal terms explained on the spot? Federal plain language guidance calls for using common, familiar words and explaining any term a general reader would not know, right where it appears, rather than in a glossary or footnote you might miss.
4. Are sentences short enough to follow in one read? Plain language guidance emphasizes active voice and concise sentence structure. If you have to reread a sentence to find its subject and verb, it likely fails this check.
5. Is there a way to ask a question or get help? A phone number, office, or contact method for people who don’t understand the notice is part of organizational health literacy as CDC defines it. Its absence is itself a gap worth noting, especially for households where English is not the first language or where someone is reading on someone else’s behalf.

A notice that fails two or more of these points is a reasonable candidate for a phone call to the issuing office to confirm the action and deadline in plain terms, rather than guessing.

What This Check Does Not Tell You

This card evaluates whether a notice’s language is clear. It does not evaluate whether the underlying instruction is medically, legally, or logistically correct for your situation, and it is not a substitute for contacting the issuing agency, your utility, your landlord, or your local emergency management office directly when a deadline or required action is unclear or in dispute. If a notice involves a health condition, medication, or medical equipment, confirm next steps with a healthcare provider or pharmacist rather than relying on notice language alone.

The Next Practical Decision

If a notice passes all five points, you can act on it directly. If it fails one or two points but the action and deadline are still identifiable, act on what you can confirm and call the listed contact to clarify the rest. If it fails three or more points, or you cannot find both an action and a deadline anywhere in the notice, treat that as reason enough to call before acting, rather than guessing at intent under time pressure.

Where This Comes From

This checklist draws on the CDC’s health literacy definitions and Clear Communication Index, and on the federal Plain Language guidelines maintained at digital.gov. Neither source publishes a numeric readability score or pass/fail threshold for individual documents, so this card is a practical reading tool, not an official certification of any specific notice.

This article is educational and does not provide legal, medical, or emergency management advice. For an active emergency, follow instructions from local officials and emergency services. For questions about a specific notice, contact the agency, office, or organization that issued it.