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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.


Improving Missing Person Messages
UPDATE: In the case of this child, he was found dead in a body of water after the WEA was issued. Most of the Missing Person messages...

Jeannette Sutton
Nov 26, 2024


Flood Preparedness Messages
Some hazards have obvious early stages, where it is possible to issue messages that can help local residents and community members to...

Jeannette Sutton
Nov 11, 2024


Strategies to Provide Additional Information in a WEA
This is a great WEA for illustrating the strategies to include additional information. Sometimes, the content that you need or want to...

Jeannette Sutton
Nov 5, 2023


Creating internal consistency across messages
Three messages sent from 11:41 pm to 4:55 am in one night. While its uncommon to find multiple messages issued over the course of the...

Jeannette Sutton
Sep 30, 2023


You're yelling again...
This use of ALL CAPS can sure make things difficult for message readers. The Editor took the liberty of making some changes to this WEA....

Jeannette Sutton
Sep 16, 2023


Message content order makes a difference for readability
WEA issued 9/5/2023 When we stumbled across this WEA on pbs.warn, the thing that popped out was the idea of an "over wall moving...

Jeannette Sutton
Sep 6, 2023


Complete messages with room for improvement
WEAs issued 3/22/23 These messages are complete and include stylistic choices to increase attention (use of ALL CAPS for GO and EVACUATE)...

Jeannette Sutton
Mar 22, 2023


When to use a URL for more information...
WEA sent 1/4/2023 In 2019 the FCC approved WEA 2.0, allowing alert originators to add a URL to their WEA message text. The reasoning...

Jeannette Sutton
Jan 4, 2023


Does "until further notice" mean another notice will follow?
WEA sent 11/15/2022. While it is understandable that alert originators would prefer to limit their use of WEA to prevent over-alerting (a...

Jeannette Sutton
Nov 15, 2022
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