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Saving time and money in the US Federal Express

Federal Express revised a ground-operations manual in plain English, which resulted in:

• an estimated $400,000 in savings in 1 year from better reading efficiency
• a 28% drop in average reading time—down from 5 to 3.6 minutes
• 27% more readers finding what they were looking for—representing 80% of its readers, up from only the 53% of readers who previously could find the information.

Source: Joann Hackos & Julian Winstead (1995) ‘Finding out what users need and giving it to them: a case study at Federal Express’ 42(2) Technical Communication.

Search time

Accuracy of search