ABSTRACT
The personal attitudes a writer has both to the subject matter and the task of composing texts for museums and heritage sites is the prime determinant of the interpretive success or failure of any label, panel, computer screen or other form of written communication with visitors. Compared to other forms of mass communication such as, for example, books, newspapers and radio, the educational communication prepared for a mass educated audience at a museum or heritage site is a fairly new media still feeling its way forward into a widely recognisable format and some people still cannot resist writing very scholarly or technical exhibition texts. Like museums, heritage sites cannot avoid a focus on communicative texts. However, as they are closer to the traditions of face-to-face conversational explanation, their approach may have much to offer museums. Most current text manuals say that labels should always be written in the active tense for a heritage audience.
