top of page
Read. Understand. Apply.
The Warn Room blogs apply 70 years of research to the practice of alerts and warnings. We show how evidence-based changes to message content, style, and structure can create more effective warnings.


When a warning has ended, what do you say?
When a warning has ended, do you send a message or do you let silence speak for you? Do you let the public figure out that the coast is...

Jeannette Sutton
Aug 18


A Model Plain Language Wildfire Message
Once in a while, a message will pop into the warn.pbs.org feed that is exceptional. This is one of those times. ** A complete, plain...

Jeannette Sutton
Feb 13


Message personalization - what does that mean for a WEA?
At the Warn Room, we frequently hear about the need to issue "targeted and personalized" messages. This is primarily in reference to...

Jeannette Sutton
Jan 16


Why Jargon Is So Bad in a Warning Message
By most assessments, this would be considered a complete message. It includes the source, the hazard, the location, the guidance, and the...

Jeannette Sutton
Aug 14, 2024


Improving an incomplete wildfire warning message
I write a lot about wildfire warnings; I do so because they honestly stand out as being some of the most frequently incomplete and...

Jeannette Sutton
Aug 9, 2024


Warning Location Information and Zones...
If you send or receive wildfire or hurricane alerts and warnings, you know that there has been a shift to the use of zones to highlight...

Jeannette Sutton
Jul 30, 2024


Write with Style that catches the EYE
One of the strategies to improve message readability is to use a mix of upper and lower case letters. This will naturally draw the...

Jeannette Sutton
Sep 2, 2023


**Evacuation Warning** but for flash flood
(click image to enlarge) WEA issued in advance of #Hilary for the CA desert The folks at the Editor's Desk have written a LOT about the...

Jeannette Sutton
Aug 27, 2023


The JARGON style of wildfire messaging
Two WEAs issued for wildfire on 7/21/23 Clearly, alert and warning writers are neck deep in technical jargon when talking about IPAWS,...

Jeannette Sutton
Jul 21, 2023


Message Inconsistency
Wildfire WEA issued on 6/28/2023 In prior posts, we discussed the importance of message consistency. Most frequently, this is a topic...

Jeannette Sutton
Jun 27, 2023


What is this unnamed hazard that you warn of?
WEA issued on 4/20/23 for a brush fire Decades ago, disaster researchers Mike Lindell and Ron Perry developed the Protective Action...

Jeannette Sutton
Apr 19, 2023


Wildfire Alert
October 16, 2022; Clark County, WA ; #nakiafire (click image to enlarge) This complete WEA includes the source, hazard, hazard impacts,...

Jeannette Sutton
Oct 15, 2022


Wildfire warning: Two great examples, two formats, two message boxes...
(click image to enlarge) Alerting software is, apparently, not easy to use. We regularly see important content placed in the description...

Jeannette Sutton
Aug 1, 2022
bottom of page