I wrote content for a plumber recently. He told me he’s not great with words.

So I was surprised at his detailed feedback.

He didn’t understand a few sentences I’d written. It was tempting to ignore that feedback and put it down to him being a plumber who’s “not great with words”.

But it was such helpful feedback I couldn’t ignore it.

My client speaks to his customers every day. He knows what language they use. And what they understand. He knows what makes them spend money on his service.

We write to share a message. To sell a product. A service. An idea.

Unclear messages mean you lose the opportunity to connect
It means you exclude people. You piss them off. And you lose out. It could mean a lost follower. A lost sale. A lost event participant.

In How Little Do Users Read?, Nielsen Norman Groups shares research where they discovered up to 20% of our words will be read…if we’re lucky.

Words are often not a priority within design and development.

That’s a mistake.

You see, when you lose the prospects you write for, it doesn’t matter how snazzy your app design or your website looks.

If you can’t persuade your reader it’s worth staying, they’ll leave. If they can’t understand what you’re saying, they won’t spend a dollar.

Plain language matters. And many around the world are realizing how important it is.

Plain language guidelines

ISO (International Organization for Standardization) is currently reviewing a new plain language standard: ISO 24495.

US federal agencies must write plainly according to the Plain Writing Act of 2010 — so the public can easily understand and use the information.

England’s Parliament passed a Clearer Timeshare Act in 1993 to encourage plain language for the legal profession.

Plain language isn’t a trend. Plain language isn’t just for the government. It’s for businesses who want to sell. It’s for not-for-profits who want to raise funds. It’s for bloggers who want to be found on Google.

Plain language is for everyone. In every language.

Today we’ll delve into plain language with examples and tools to help you connect with your readers:

• How plain language helps everyone
• Why do we find it hard to write in plain language?
• A myth that holds us back from writing plainly
• 5 tips to write plainly

How plain language helps everyone

Your reader could have a doctorate or they could be an expert. Yet English might be their second language. Or like us, they have busy lives.

“I don’t have time for gobbledygook. I like getting the information fast.”

That’s the comment from a participant in a writing for web study.

Writing in simple, clear language helps us whether we’re sighted, blind, or have a cognitive disability.

It also helps us when we:

• Need to book a vaccination online
• Shop online late at night after a long day
• Want to buy a property and need to understand the conditions
• Walk around the streets looking for a new restaurant on our phones
• Read a video transcript or captions because the kids have the tv volume up loud

Why do we find it hard to write in plain language?

We’ve been conditioned to write with complex words and walls of text in school.

We were encouraged to learn bigger, harder words at school. Snazzy words and long paragraphs made our essays and exam answers sound impressive.

Perhaps we’ve scored interviews with swanky applications.

We think our reports, websites, and media releases sound better with flowy, 10 line sentences.

Plain language is harder to craft than most people think

You might be reading this on an iPhone. Apple products are so damn easy to use, aren’t they?

But you might not realize the effort behind them. Steve Jobs gave us a hint of what it takes to develop products people find easy to use when he said:

“That’s been one of my mantras — focus & simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex; you have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple.”

It takes more effort and time to write simply.

Yet we can all create a better experience for our readers by using plain language.

A myth that holds us back from writing in plain language

The myth I hear often as a writer is:
‘My target readers are professionals with higher education.’

In the story about my plumber client, it was tempting to ignore his feedback. I could have argued that his clients are likely to have a higher level of education. He hadn’t gone to college but they may have.

I could have dismissed his feedback because he wasn’t the writer. I was.

But that would have been a mistake.

You see, writing simply isn’t about education or ego.

Our readers are bombarded with content from all directions, every day. They choose to spend mental energy on some tasks.

They can’t put 100% of their energies into everything that calls for their attention every day.

Complex writing slows them.

Usability experts, Nielsen Norman Group discovered even experts prefer plain language.

Peter Butt is a founding Director of the Law and Justice Foundation in New South Wales, Australia.

In a seminar about the Plain Language Law for Non-Lawyers, he shared 4 great reasons to write in plain language:

• It is possible to express legal concepts in plain language
• Plain language saves money
• Judges prefer plain language
• The public prefers plain language

If legal professionals realize the value of plain language, we need to take notice.

Key takeaway: College-educated professionals and experts appreciate plain language.

Next, we’ll look at 5 ways to write plainly so we can help our readers glide through our content.

5 tips to write in plain language

Writing plainly takes more effort than it seems. These 5 tips will give you a kickstart:

1. Write at a lower secondary reading level
2. Write conversationally
3. Choose simple words over complex ones
4. Cut sentences
5. Clarify acronyms

Tip 1. Write at a lower secondary reading level

In Lower Literacy Users: Writing for a Broad Consumer Audience, Nielsen Norman Group recommends we write at a grade 6 level on homepages. And a grade 8 level on other web pages.

This is consistent with the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) recommendation:
Write text for a lower secondary education level

A lower secondary level is defined by the W3C as more than 9 years of school. If the content isn’t at that level, then extra content needs to be shared at a lower reading level.

What reading level is your writing?

A helpful tool to help you write in plain language

Plain language is subjective.

The Hemingway Editor tool is a quick way to find out the reading level of your content.

It also shares tips to help you cut down the reading level if it’s too high.

A plain language writing example

Cut and paste the paragraph below into the Hemingway Editor — you’ll see it’s at a postgraduate reading level. It’s a portion from a research paper summary:

If the major reviews in this area are correct, people seeking to maximize happiness should forego the pursuit of money, beauty, and material possessions, and instead devote their lives to developing and maintaining close personal relationships. However, close examination of these reviews reveals that authors rarely address the link between the existence of social relationships and greater well-being. Instead, they focus on whether people are satisfied with their relationships or whether they value relationships over and above other life goals.

TO DO

Before you keep reading, have a go at rewriting the paragraph in plain language. Aim for a level 8 readability level.

Rewrite

This rewrite brought the content to a grade 6 level:

If the major reviews in this area are correct, people who want to be happy should stop pursuing money, beauty, or material things. They should devote their lives to close relationships.

However, the authors rarely look at the link between relationships and well-being. They focus on whether:

1. people are happy with their relationships

2. they value relationships more than other life goals

Key takeaway: Write at a lower secondary reading level.

Tip 2. Use conversational language

Have you ever read a website’s terms and conditions? A privacy policy? Or a legal document?

These documents are known for being ridiculously tedious and so damn hard to understand.

Don’t make me think!

What does the research say about writing conversationally?
Usability expert Norman Nielson Group ran research on how users read on the web. Participants complained about writing that was hard to understand.

A participant commented on a movie review:

“This review needs a complete rewrite to put it into more down-to-earth language, so that just anybody could read it and understand.”

Some participants liked informal, or conversational, writing better than formal writing. One participant shared:

“I prefer informal writing, because I like to read fast. I don’t like reading every word, and with formal writing, you have to read every word, and it slows you down”.

2 simple ways to write conversationally

Address your reader directly and refer to yourself directly: Use words like ‘you’, ‘I’, ‘we’, and ‘our’.

Read your content aloud as if you’re speaking to a friend or colleague: Does it sound natural? Or does it sound like you’re reading a textbook or a business document?

An example
Take a peek at how I rewrote my website terms of use and privacy policy in conversational, plain language.

How quickly and easily could you understand it?

Terms and privacy policies are boring no matter what you do. But writing them in plain language gives your reader an option to digest it easily and quickly.

Key takeaway: Write conversationally.

Tip 3. Choose simple words over complex words

A great way to start writing plainly is to use simple words instead of complex words.

Example of simple word replacements

Instead of:

Prohibit: use ‘ban’
Communicate: use ‘tell us’, ‘let us know’
Demonstrate: use ‘show’
Diversity: use ‘range’
Facilitate: use ‘help’
Amendment: use ‘change’

Plain language resources to help you choose simple words

So far you’ve learned to write in plain language by writing:

• At a lower secondary level
• Conversationally
• Simple words over complex ones

Another couple of ways to write simply is to:

• Cut sentences
• Clarify acronyms

Tip 4. Cut your sentences and paragraphs

Cutting long sentences is a simple way to improve readability. It’s easier to digest it on mobile too. Yet many people don’t bother.

Below is a before and after example of a news article. The article shares which Master Teachers were chosen to teach a professional development program to teachers. The aim is to encourage teachers to enrol in the program.

Before

The text shown below was put through the Hemingway Editor.

The Teaching Excellence Program, being delivered by the Victorian Academy of Teaching and Leadership, is an Australian-first program of advanced professional learning for highly skilled teachers in government, Catholic and independent schools.

The learning undertaken by these most highly skilled Victorian teachers will be constructed, enabled and supported by Master Teachers identified to work within each of eight Disciplinary streams.

The screenshot below shows the Hemingway Editor’s review of the content. And suggestions to improve it.

The editor points out the readability level is grade 15 which is poor. There are 2 adverbs — aim for 1 or fewer. There are 2 uses of passive voice — cut to 1 or fewer. And 2 of 4 sentences are very hard to read.

Before you see the rewrite, have a go at rewriting it in plain language.

After

Below, the content is written by cutting sentences and using dot points:

The Teaching Excellence Program is the first professional learning program in Australia. It is for skilled teachers in:

- Government schools

- Catholic schools

- Independent schools

Master Teachers will lead the program which includes 8 disciplinary streams. The Victorian Academy of Teaching and Leadership runs the program.

Below is a screenshot showing what the Hemingway Editor thought of the rewrite. It tells us the content is good. It’s at a grade 8 level — with none of the problems we had in the complex content.

The plain language version of this article means teachers can quickly understand the benefits of this program. And they’re more likely to enrol.

Tip 5. Clarify acronyms

I’ve spent the last few months helping out a communications team within a government department. If you’ve ever worked in government, you’ll realize they use a crapload of acronyms.

If you’ve ever worked for any organization, you’ll come across acronyms. Being new is a great opportunity to question things.

Here’s what I discovered about people’s reactions when I asked about acronyms:

• People are expected to know them
• People assume everyone else knows
• Longstanding employees have different interpretations
• New employees feel confused and left out
• Many employees don’t remember them and feel silly they don’t know them

So how can we deal with acronyms?

How to deal with acronyms

In their 113 guidelines for homepage usability, usability expert Nielson Norman Group recommends we:

• Spell out abbreviations, initialisms, and acronyms.
• Immediately include their abbreviation in the first instance.

This is helpful for all users including people who use a screen reader.

Exceptions

• It’s ok to use abbreviations for widely used words, such as DVD
• Avoid using unexplained abbreviations in navigation links

Don’t confuse your reader. Don’t make your prospect think.

Key takeaway: Clarify acronyms that aren’t widely known.

In a nutshell: Write in plain language

Your readers — your prospects — are busy. They read in a range of situations. On a range of devices.

They don’t have time for big words, walls of text, and acronyms they have to rack their brains to figure out.

You respect their time when you use plain language. You make it easy for them to quickly digest your message. To follow you. To download your trial product. To buy from you.

That’s great for them. And for you.

Share your message in plain language by using these 5 tips:

1. Write at a lower secondary reading level
2. Write conversationally
3. Choose simple words over complex ones
4. Cut sentences
5. Clarify acronyms

No one will ever complain about writing that’s too easy to understand.

What do you think is the reading level of this article? Throw it into the Hemingway App and let me know in the comment below.