Plain English, so it lands
Dawn A plain-English and structure check for the pages people actually need
Most council and SEND content is written by people who know the subject too well. It fills up with jargon, long sentences and headings that ask a question instead of answering one. The reader, usually a stressed parent or carer, gives up.
Dawn checks a page and marks the exact words to look at to make it
- Easy to scan
- Easy to read
- Plain English
- Get the information you need or the task done
Why Dawn
- It marks the text in place, as you write, not in a separate report you have to read
- It is tuned for SEND and public-service writing, with a word list for terms like statementing, provision and setting
- It never gives a reading-age score, and it tells you why
- It suggests when a long page should become a step by step or a guide
- Nothing you type leaves your browser: no account, no upload, no AI
- The rules come from Content Design London's Readability Guidelines , Gov.uk style guides, and working with LAs and parent carers.
What it checks
Every check points at a specific place in the text. Turn any of them off if it does not fit your house style.
Structure and front-loading
An opening that does not answer the title, walls of text, paragraphs doing too much, headings phrased as questions
Words your readers may not know
Jargon, vague words, Latin, and a SEND and public-service list, plus acronyms that are never spelled out
Prose that should be a list
A sentence or a bullet that is really several items at once
Long sentences
The exact sentences over about 25 words, flagged to look at, not a target to hit
Passive voice and wordiness
Passive constructions, hedging, hidden verbs like make an application, and stray adverbs
Inclusive language
Ableist, ageist, gendered and racist-in-tech terms, with a plainer alternative
House style
ALL CAPS, Title Case headings, ampersands, eg and ie, and vague link text like find out more
Make it a guide
Whether a long page should be split into a step by step or a guide, with a page list built from your headings
How it works
It runs in your browser
The whole checker is a small piece of JavaScript that loads with the page and then runs on your own device. When you type or paste, nothing is sent anywhere. We cannot see your text, because your text never reaches us.
No reading-age score
Flesch and Kincaid, SMOG and the rest measure sentence length and word length, then turn that into a US school grade. They say nothing about whether your reader knows the words or can act on the page, and people end up writing to the number. Dawn shows you specific things to look at instead.
No AI
Every check is a rule or a word list. There is no model, no third party, no cost per use. An optional AI rewrite is on the roadmap but off by default, and it is not part of this version.
Built on the Readability Guidelines
The word lists and rules come from Content Design London's Readability Guidelines, with a SEND and public-service layer of our own. The same engine is what automates the readability and content parts of a Bearings Local Offer audit.
Dawn is free to use, with no account. It also runs as a module inside Chorus, the parent carer forum website, so writers get the same checks in the page editor.
Try it on a page you are working on now.