Local History

Labels: Writing Style

This article originally appeared in Exchange, a newsletter published by the Wisconsin Historical Society. (Volume 24, Number 5, September/October, 1982) It is the seventh in a series of articles titled Exhibiting Local Heritage. The series features information about planning, designing and constructing interpretive museum exhibits. This article was written by Tom McKay, retired local history coordinator for the Wisconsin Historical Society.

Anyone who remembers taking English composition in school probably also remembers thinking, at one time or another, "I know what I want to say, but I don't know how to say it." After developing an idea for an interpretive exhibit, conducting careful research on the topic, and identifying objects and historic materials appropriate to the subject, an exhibit planner knows what he wants to say. Knowing how to say it remains a challenge that requires, in part, developing an effective writing style.

A previous column in this series introduced four types of labels: Title, keyword label, detail label, and caption. Among these, the detail labels involve writing text in paragraph form. Over the years, many museums have discovered (or suspected) that visitors often pay very little attention to the text in exhibits. They simply don't read the labels!

Effective labels must overcome the fatigue and distractions that visitors experience in an exhibit. Labels that do so have three general attributes. They are brief, easy to read and interesting. To achieve such results in detail labels, the exhibit planner may need to learn a new style of writing.

When William Shakespeare wrote, "Brevity is the soul of wit," he coined the perfect motto for label writers. Detail labels must be brief. The best detail labels are 50 to 70 words in length. A relationship exists between label length and the number of labels in an exhibit. A small case or panel exhibit with a single detail label might easily accommodate a text of one hundred words. An exhibit of a dozen cases and panels with labels for each must be much more rigorous in aiming for 50- to-70-word labels. After all, visitors are standing in front of a case rather than curling up with a book in a comfortable chair. They quickly tire of reading long labels.

Good labels are also easy to read. Type size, style and production techniques obviously play a major role in reading ease, but writing style is also an important factor. Write detail labels in short, simple, declarative sentences. Write, for example, "In 1828 Vermonter Henry McNeal built a landing for steamboats to take on wood. This was the seed for the new community of Hampton," rather than, "Henry McNeal moved in 1828 from Vermont to Illinois and the present site of Hampton where he built a landing for riverboats to stop and take on loads of wood that were used to fire the steam boilers on board." Exhibit labels frequently make good use of modifying clauses, but compound sentences linking strings of prepositional phrases and modifying clauses will lose many visitors to distractions in the gallery.

Label writers can easily identify label length and simple construction, but what makes a label interesting? Part of the answer is again style. Use the active voice, not the passive. Say, "The Mississippi River shaped Hampton's early history," not "Hampton's early history was shaped by the Mississippi River." Similarly, you should search for direct, vivid adjectives. "The winter of 1857, one of the most severe on record," can be stated more pithily as "the brutal winter of 1857."

Finally, historical information itself makes a label interesting. This means striving to write in specifics. Do not write, "The Gardners established a home far from the nearest permanent settlement." If your research permits, write, "The Gardners established a home 30 miles west of Emmetsburg, the nearest permanent settlement." Interesting labels do the most to overcome fatigue and distractions.

Skillful writers develop through constant practice and effort. Label writing is no exception. Most good labels are rewritten and rewritten before they become brief, easy to read and interesting. Writing effective labels requires hard work, much thought, and self-criticism. The payoff comes when more and more visitors read the labels as well as look at the artifacts.