The Myth of Plain Language

A common misguided objection I hear about plain language is that it dumbs down content and thus insults intelligent readers. This complaint is often loudest among authors who write for skilled professionals and academics.

Some writers use an academic tone out of habit or try to impress readers with complex sentences and showy vocabulary. The misconceived notion that long sentences and big words make you sound smarter (or more professional) results in great sacrifices to readability and credibility.

All writers, including producers of technical and academic content, owe it to readers to communicate information simply, and clearly. Remember that the primary goal of communication is to convey information. Here are some advantages of clear, straightforward writing:

  • It communicates information succinctly and efficiently so that readers understand the message quickly, without having to decipher complicated sentences or vague jargon.
  • It benefits everybody, from expert readers to international users and people who use English as a second language (ESL). If your content is meant to appeal to an international audience, plain language is even more crucial.
  • It is easily searchable and will often gain you a better SEO ranking. The words that you use in your copy should reflect the words people enter in search engines.
  • It is welcome by readers; in fact, studies show that it makes the writer look smarter. (If people understand more of what you’re saying, they will likely feel that you make sense.)

Good communication has strong business value. Organizations with clear writing styles are perceived to possess greater transparency and credibility than companies that don’t. Plain language removes barriers between you and your readers. It sets your organization apart from the competition, resulting in increased conversions and loyalty.

Forget conventions of technical writing. Push aside reports and articles that are traditionally written. They tend to be verbose and difficult to understand. If you think clearly, you will express yourself clearly. Your audience wants easy-to-read content that allows them to get the gist of the message efficiently. No one has ever complained that a text was too easy to understand.

Plain language is even more important online than in person. Online copy doesn’t convey inflections well, and fast-moving Web users will miss key messages if they’re not communicated succinctly and formatted to support scanning.

Even Experts Prefer Plain Language

In our recent usability study with domain experts in science, technology, and medical fields, we discovered that even highly educated online readers crave succinct information that is easy to scan, just like everyone else. Here are some examples of their reactions to online content:

PCMags.com: An IT manager expressed his appreciation of this summary for products reviews: "This [top area] is short, easy to digest. It gives a very clear picture of what the review… is without reading the review. It gives you information, relevant information, regardless of how much time you spend on it. I can spend ten seconds and get information from that."
IMB.com: The same IT manager didn’t like an article on IBM.com because it used branded terms he didn’t understand, like MessageSight: "This is probably not a page I'd look into more. It's got a whole lot of jargon and technical terms I'm not aware of.”
Grants.NIH.gov: A college professor looking for grants became frustrated with convoluted content: “It’s generally dense. Most academic stuff is. This is crazy dense. It’s too much. I’d rather have less. All this is so complicated. All of this government funding stuff…What is a SF424? Why can't we call that something simpler? This is way too complicated… I personally prefer it be to be nice and conversational."
GAO.gov: An information-systems officer balked at this page for having illegible text that lacked formatting: "I can tell you I hate the way this is laid out. Small text, no headings."
A nurse practitioner with a doctorate in nursing compared these two versions of an article on opioid treatments: The original (left) contained big words and longer sentences, while the revised (right) was written in casual language and better formatted. She preferred the revised version for its concision and ease of scanning: “This one [revision] is better. I like the larger headings. It’s much more succinct. There is not as much fluff…You can slam dunk this a lot faster, depending on what you are looking for. I get feeds all day long from medical things and I peruse them and see if something interests me…. [Reading the revision] would be easier for me … because I [can] see quickly what the issues are. The headlines are nice, bullets are nice. This is a better format for a medical feed.”


Tips for Writing in Plain Language

The following techniques can improve online writing and communication:

1. Know your audience.

A fundamental practice of good writing is to identify your target audience before you write. The more you know about your users, the better you can craft your writing to match their needs and expectations. Consider your audience’s reading level, the concepts and vocabulary with which it is familiar, and the questions it wants answered. Then write for that audience.

Writing for a specialized audience is different than writing for the general public. Within different groups of readers, a spectrum of knowledge exists, depending on one’s specialty and role. Even people who work in the same industry don’t share the same vocabulary level. For example, a scientist with 10 years of experience will have a deeper understanding of scientific jargon than a graduate student.

Furthermore, medical jargon commonly shared by colleagues in one country might not be understood by experts in another country. Students and internal users might need specialized terms defined, but doing so risks alienating experts who might mistakenly think the information is for lay people.

Different writing strategies are required for different users. If your message must reach multiple audiences, it’s important to prioritize them. Avoid writing for everyone. When you write for everyone, you write for no one. The more specific you are at identifying your audience and the goal of your piece, the more focused and appealing your writing will be.

Your audience should shape what you write and how you write it. For example, overviews and background prose might be necessary for the general public, but for experts general statements get in the way of facts.

2. Choose words familiar to your audience.

Use words that are simple and familiar to your audience instead of fancy or complicated words that confuse readers.

In general, when you have two competing terms that have similar meaning, pick the term that is most familiar to your audience — the word more likely to be used by them. Not only is there a higher chance that users will know these words, but they will comprehend them faster than other less frequently used words. (The more familiar a word, the higher its activation in memory, and the shorter the memory-retrieval time.)

Remove slang, idioms, and branded terms. Slang and idioms have varying degrees of familiarity across ages and geography. Branded terms invented by your organization to refer to processes or products take a long time to enter public vocabulary, and should be replaced (or at least accompanied) by explicit terms.

Not only is complex language hard to understand, but it also lends the copy a pretentious, cringeworthy tone of voice, that can sound patronizing and can alienate your audience.

If you must use technical terms that your target readers may not know, explain them first. What is considered simple and familiar varies, depending on your audience. For example, for general audiences, the word cut is common. But for surgeons, the word incision might be just as familiar, while having the benefit of greater precision.

We usually warn against using jargon, as it’s often meaningless and sounds pretentious. Jargon is helpful, however, when it communicates a concept clearly understood by specialized user groups. When expert groups share a common vocabulary, technical jargon can serve as a shortcut in communication. For example, for physicians, “ventricular tachycardia” is a lot shorter and more precise than “rapid heart rhythm that arises from improper electrical activity of the heart and starts in the bottom chambers of the heart”.

However, before you use a technical term, make sure your audience truly knows its meaning. We’ve witnessed many instances of professionals being baffled by unfamiliar jargon.

When writing for experts, pay careful attention to when you need to explain a concept or term. If you interrupt an article to explain a concept generally known by experts, you risk alienating them. It’s best to keep the focus of each article on your target audience, then place supplementary details or explanations for secondary audiences in a different content layer (e.g., through hyperlinks).

3. Use short sentences and paragraphs.

Be succinct. A fundamental writing principle is that good sentences have few words. If you can convey the same ideas in fewer words, do it. Omit unnecessary language that adds little value to the message — even when you write for highly educated audiences. Professionals are busy and will appreciate succinct content that  allows them to spend cognitive resources on processing the information, and not on parsing sentences.

As a rule of thumb, for the web aim to use fewer than 50% of the words you would use in a printed publication. Rambling sentences, often found in academic papers, tend to have an overabundance of commas, semicolons, and clauses. When readers try to wade through long sentences, they get stuck between clauses and become frustrated.

Eliminate the following types of words or phrases:

  • Redundancies (e.g., “therapeutic treatment”)
  • Idioms (e.g., “ground-breaking”)
  • Pointless modifiers (e.g., “at this moment in time”)
  • Meaningless generalities (e.g., “today’s world is full of challenges”)

Distilling copy to the essential points requires cognitive effort and attention to detail. Write and rewrite drafts until you’ve removed unnecessary words. Sentences should be no more than 15–20 words. Communicate one idea per paragraph. It’s fine to have paragraphs that contain only 1–2 sentences as long as they clearly explain the paragraph’s idea.

4. Aim for a 10-12th grade reading level.

We usually recommend writing at the 6–8th grade reading level  for general audiences. (Note that reading levels correspond to people’s reading achievements, not their actual grade level, age, or intelligence.)

However, when writing for experts and scholars, writing at the 10–12th grade reading level is appropriate. Highly educated professionals can handle higher reading levels. Text beyond the 12th grade reading level requires too much mental effort, even for highly educated people. (For the sake of comparison, this article is at a 10th grade reading level. We target UX professionals on this website and we hope that you find this text easy to read. But many members of the broad consumer audience may find it difficult.)

If you haven’t done so already, make a habit of measuring the readability of your copy. You can use computer tools such as Microsoft Word’s built-in grammar checker to do that. If your writing level is too high, shorten your sentences, paragraphs, and words.

5. Follow web-formatting rules for readability.

Well-formatted content helps people of all reading levels, including highly educated professionals. In fact, content that’s written for professionals needs to be even more readable because of the intricate nature of the information they consume.

Well-established web formatting techniques attract attention to the most important elements of your text and significantly improve its readability. They help people scan pages quickly and access areas relevant to them. The most common and effective web-formatting conventions are:

You can significantly improve your copy by writing to support scanning. Avoid presenting content as a massive wall of text.

Conclusion

Plain language is a necessity and can have a big payoff for both consumers and organizations. Being direct and plainspoken is not talking down. It is clear communication. Follow established web-writing guidelines to maximize readability.

Reference
Oppenheimer, D. M. (2006). Consequences of erudite vernacular utilized irrespective of necessity: Problems with using long words needlessly. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 20, 139 –156. doi:10.1002/acp.1178