Reading the Label Out Loud

Reading a draft label out loud is the fastest way to catch the sentence that only survived because it looked respectable in a Word document. Your mouth is much less polite than your eyes. When you stumble over a nested clause or run out of breath before the verb arrives, that is the exact spot where a tired visitor will stop reading.

I ask curators to read their drafts standing up, at normal speaking pace, to someone who did not work on the exhibition. If the reader automatically translates a stiff phrase into plain speech halfway through—"well, basically what this means is the clock ran backward"—write down what they just said and put that on the wall.