This Orwell essay stuck with me many years ago, well worth a read: https://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_poli...
It's only the best English essay of its kind — or maybe of any kind!
How to Write in Plain English
31–40 of 327 posts
Re: How to Write in Plain English
#32I write technical guides for people who are not native speakers. Using simple vocabulary is easy, but using simple grammar is not.
Here's a recent article I wrote. It should give you an idea of what I mean: https://allaboutberlin.com/guides/car-insurance-germany
There are a few things I would add to this:
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▶ Your readers are here for information, not entertainment. Get to the point.
▶ If a paragraph answers a question, the first sentence should be the tl;dr. Highlight it if necessary. [1]
▶ Use formatting to make skimming easier. Users don't read documents from start to finish. They are looking for specific answers. [2] I spent a lot of time tweaking my website to be more readable.
▶ Use can (optional), should (recommended) and must (mandatory) consistently. "It's ill-advised to do this, because ..." >>> "You should not do this, because ...".
▶ Avoid run-on sentences. Generally, that means maximum one comma per sentence.
▶ Start with the "if" part of the sentence: "If you are over 60, you are not eligible". It lets people skip sentences that don't concern them.
▶ Avoid expressions and idioms as much as possible. "If you're feeling under the weather, stay home" >>> "If you don't feel well, stay home".
▶ Avoid ambiguity between sentences: "The cat sits in the house. It is old." >>> "The old cat sits in the house".
▶ Use commas generously. It makes sentences easier to digest. I'm a big fan of the Oxford comma.
▶ Use Hemingway [3] to catch some of those mistakes
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In other words, DON'T BE CLEVER. It feels a lot like writing software that will be maintained by novice programmers.
Simple language is really important, especially if you deal with the general population. Some people don't read well. Some people don't speak English well. Some topics are confusing enough on their own.
[1] https://allaboutberlin.com/guides/anmeldung-in-english-berli...
[2] https://allaboutberlin.com/guides/how-to-get-a-german-freela...
Re: How to Write in Plain English
#33"a mistake was made" as a good use of passive? Is that a joke?
I had the same reaction. That section was painful. On the other hand, sometimes people get away with it, so the advice is right in one sense, even if it's wrong in another.
Re: How to Write in Plain English
#34[deleted]
Re: How to Write in Plain English
#35Heres a great list from GOV.UK of the kind of words to avoid when using Plain English: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/style-guide/a-to-z-of-gov-uk-sty...
someone could write a simple grammar checker that looks for words in that list, passive voices, sentence length and whatnot and suggests alternatives. It wouldn't work without human oversight but then again, no automated checker really does.
Re: How to Write in Plain English
#36Longer sentences are better and more efficient for conveying content when used appropriately. Short sentences mean you have to use too many conjunctions and other filler. Use whatever style you think will be the most effective for readers.
I think there are two kinds of long sentences.
One just keeps adding detail. It's essentially a list. Breaking it up into multiple sentences would require a lot of unnecessary conjunctions as you say.
The other kind of long sentence forces you to keep a lot in your head until the meaning is finally resolved at the very end. That's the kind of sentence that should be broken up because it creates unnecessary mental burden.
Re: How to Write in Plain English
#37> Most of the UK's biggest insurance companies produce policies that explain everything fully in plain English. Is this an argument in favour of plain English? Insurance policy documents are incredibly hard to understand and full of bloat. They are a near-perfect example of how not to write an accessible, informative, and useful document for the intended audience.
In the UK, the Plain English Campaign awards certifications to numerous insurance companies, among other businesses and organisations, for writing their policies in Plain English.
The point they are making is that plain English belongs is present in domains as hefty and complex as insurance.
Re: How to Write in Plain English
#38Writing clearly is like playing Tetris. Sentences should be presented with clauses that drop down and slot together efficiently. At the earliest available opportunity you drop in a block that completes the line and points are won/made. This can also make for rather dull writing and I appreciate the irony in this paragraph: > However, at first you may still find yourself writing the odd long sentence, especially when…
Don't make your readers hold parts of the sentence in their head. Reorder or split sentences until it can be avoided. In other words, use a really small buffer.
"You must fill form 331 unless you are over 60 years old, in which case you must fill form 445."
"You must fill form 331. If you are over 60 years old, you must fill 445 instead."
"If you are over 60 years old, you must fill form 445. Otherwise, you must fill form 331."
You might have noticed that the last version is an if-else statement.
Re: How to Write in Plain English
#39I'm curious. Is there a specific reason why the trend for our use of the English language went towards this direction, when in the past, a lot of the historical material I read seemed intentionally verbose?
Sure, it's all for ensuring we are understood better among ourselves, but I wonder if writing this way makes us cognitively simpler.
Re: How to Write in Plain English
#40> Most of the UK's biggest insurance companies produce policies that explain everything fully in plain English. Is this an argument in favour of plain English? Insurance policy documents are incredibly hard to understand and full of bloat. They are a near-perfect example of how not to write an accessible, informative, and useful document for the intended audience.
Two paragraphs down: > Sadly, thanks to the bureaucrats of public service industries, local councils, banks, building societies, _insurance companies_ and government departments, we have learnt to accept an official style of writing that is inefficient and often unfriendly. > But in the last few years, many of these offenders have started to put things right, either rewriting their documents clearly or training their…
I saw that but couldn't square it with the earlier sentence.
In my previous role we interviewed tens of small business owners and nobody knew what was in their docs. I hope insurance companies will be as bold to go beyond simplifying language but also simplifying terms (e.g. Lemonade's https://www.lemonade.com/policy-two)