The tips for improving face to face communication have been known for millennia. Sit up and speak loudly and clearly. Do not yell. Do avoid figures of speech others may not know. Yet we have moved into the digital world, and the tips to improve communication in that realm are not yet known to everyone who uses it.

1. Minimize buzzwords. These are the modern equivalent of figures of speech. Even worse, their meaning can change day to day in the blogosphere, making a buzzword popular today into an insult tomorrow.

2. Keep the vocabulary of most content to an 8th grade level. Even advanced readers of English may not have the patience to reference words they rarely encounter.

3. Do not just spell check and grammar check. Review the work for flow and reasonableness. A spell check could flag a word as redundant or wrong and change it in a way that changes the meaning of the whole sentence.

4. Why use a long sentence when a diminutive one will do? Readers follow along better when sentences are shorter.

5. Attribute all quotes, even if paraphrased. Plagiarism checkers are now freely available and free to use. Not attributing references will be found out eventually and ruin your digital reputation.

6. Spell out acronyms upon their first use followed by the acronym. For example, state the Federal Bureau of Investigation or FBI. In long documents, reference the acronym and its meaning at least once per page.

7. If referencing your own work in a digital publication, do so sparingly. Once is fair. More than once becomes spam.

8. Keep fonts readable for all eyes. Use fonts that are translatable to the most common word processing software.

9. Bolding is bad unless used rarely.

10. Never use emphasis fonts and visual signals like repeat exclamation points more than once per page.

11. If safety warnings or legal disclaimers are used, put them near the top of the first page of document. If there is more than one printed page or subsequent web pages, include the safety warnings or legal disclaimers on those pages.

12.   Limit three dimensional graphics to architectural diagrams, engineering drawings, and assembly instructions.

13. Minimize streaming video to avoid sucking up bandwidth. Use video formats that are universal or nearly so.

14. Never set up background music on a web page with streaming video. If the two are active at once, the customer cannot hear the streaming video and gains a low opinion of the company.