My mum is 74 and keeps getting texts about parcels she hasn't ordered. Write her a one-page thing I can print and stick by the kettle: how to tell a scam text from a real one, what to do when she's not sure, and who to call. Big type, no jargon, no scaring her.
This request carried four constraints, three of them about feeling rather than content: big type, no jargon, don't frighten her, one page.
It got three of the four right, and the one it missed is the one you only find by opening the file.
Most advice written about scams is written to alarm. This opens with:
That single sentence does the work the request was actually asking for. It moves the burden off the reader and onto the sender — slowing down is framed as reasonable behaviour that a legitimate company expects, not as a precaution against her own gullibility. Nothing in the sheet implies she might be fooled.
The page is built as three colour-blocked panels matching the three things asked for: what makes a text suspicious, what to do when unsure, and who to call — with a blank left to write in a family member's number by hand.
18pt body, 34pt headings, on A4. Not "reasonably legible" — actually readable across a kitchen.
The words phishing, smishing and malware appear nowhere. Neither does any advice that requires knowing what a domain is.
The PDF is two pages. The HTML it wrote sets the sheet's minimum height to 273mm, then puts it inside 12mm page margins with its own padding on top of that — so the content is taller than a 297mm A4 sheet and spills onto a second page carrying almost nothing.
Look at what the run reported. It said it made "a calm, large-print A4 sheet" — which is true, and is not the same as one page. The step list ends cleanly. The file opens. Nothing anywhere says the constraint was missed.
The check that would have caught it — count the pages in the rendered PDF — is exactly the check that was not run, because the file was verified as a file: written, sized, present on disk. Page count is a property that only exists after rendering, and the verification stopped one step short of it.
For a sheet meant to go on a fridge, the second page is not cosmetic. You print it, and the useful half is separated from the phone number.
The judgement in this one is genuinely good. The hard part of the request was tone, and the tone is right — a person who has been getting these texts for months would not feel patronised by it, which is more than most bank leaflets manage.
The easy part is what it got wrong. Trim the sheet's minimum height and it is a one-page document; nobody who is not looking for it would notice the cause. But it was asked for one page, and it delivered two.
Under two minutes on Smart. See the run: https://elsedoes.com/share/52408d60bc4f47219310de4f47f42a15
parcel-text-checklist.pdf 44.6 KB
By Heei