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How to Write in Plain English

plainenglish.co.uk

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Re: How to Write in Plain English

#111

Post by icu »

pinky07 wrote: post #66
icu wrote: post #5

Plain English has been a 'super power' for my report writing ever since it was drummed into me by a former CEO and MD at a finance and economic consultancy I worked at after University. "Style toward Clarity and Grace" by Joseph M. Williams is, imho, the most thorough, yet comprehensible, guide to how to write in Plain English. It goes beyond short 'do this, don't do that' guides by explaining why, and how, English c…

I wrote a memento / summary of the book, for anyone interested to discover it at a glance: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1F8_p3bkzugTvkBd1Ja6bHLR2...

Thank you for the link, this is a great resource you've put together! I'll be sure to share with some of my colleagues.

Re: How to Write in Plain English

#112

Post by alexchamberlain »

nicbou wrote: post #106
nske wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a surprisingly large proportion of users don't actually know how old they are How did they manage this? I've tried every way I can think of forgetting my age, to no avail -the bastard number is always there :)

I'm in my late twenties and sometimes I need to pause, a bit like dealing with left/right or east/west.

I may forget my age, but I can't forget I'm now over 30.

Re: How to Write in Plain English

#113

Post by j4yav »

dgellow wrote: post #85
nicbou wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Don't make your readers hold parts of the sentence in their head. Funny to read this as I'm learning German! In German the main verb of a sentence has to be at the end depending on the context (e.g: if it is a question, or following some prepositions such as "dass"). Let's say we want to build a question, it will be constructed this way: 1. question marker (such as "Was", "Wo", "Warum", etc) 2. subject 3. other det…

I learned Dutch, which does the same thing with the verb, and at one point after a few years it just clicked and started feeling natural to structure sentences that way. I've been living abroad long enough that occasionally I catch myself trying to organize English sentences in that way as I'm speaking (which, of course, results in falling flat on my face at the end.)

In Dutch at least, you can imagine these really long sentences which build up details, adding more and more, until they finally surprise you with the verb at the end. But in practice people don't speak that way - the patterns of speech and just the way people use the language in different subtle ways mostly prevents that from happening, in natural ways that don't feel terse. It may be different in academia/legal professions and that sort of thing.

Re: How to Write in Plain English

#114

Post by smichel17 »

nske wrote: post #101
inopinatus wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Experienced UX practitioners will immediately note that a surprisingly large proportion of users don't actually know how old they are; furthermore, of those that do, another significant segment will (intentionally or otherwise) mis-state their age, date of birth etc. This problem is further exacerbated by the wide variety of temporal arithmetic possibilities any such workflow might adopt. The solution is to either co…

> a surprisingly large proportion of users don't actually know how old they are How did they manage this? I've tried every way I can think of forgetting my age, to no avail -the bastard number is always there :)

I'm in my twenties. Sometimes I forget my age. Only ever by one year -- I just don't remember if my birthday passed or not. Kind of like in January when write oit today's date and accidentally use the previous year. After a few mistakes, your brain adjusts and you start using the right one. Same thing for my age, except that I don't actually think about my age very often; it hasn't mattered much since I passed 21.

Re: How to Write in Plain English

#115

Post by drdeadringer »

aclimatt wrote: post #100

I'd guess (almost) everyone wishes everyone else wrote in plain language. But there's potentially a more fundamental reason people don't. bambax in another comment pointed out the power of ambiguity, and that's one of the reasons especially in legal / government, but there's another. Language, specifically jargon, is an expression of culture. It's an expression of power, education, experience, or lack thereof. It's a…

> "Business English"

I'm not sure why it took me until now to name that style of speaking.

Over 10 years ago I was in a room where someone said "let us dialogue about this offline" to actually mean "shut up, let's continue".

I am often reminded of the phrase "It does not require many words to speak the truth", but here we are with "Business English".

Re: How to Write in Plain English

#116

Post by nicbou »

aclimatt wrote: post #100

I'd guess (almost) everyone wishes everyone else wrote in plain language. But there's potentially a more fundamental reason people don't. bambax in another comment pointed out the power of ambiguity, and that's one of the reasons especially in legal / government, but there's another. Language, specifically jargon, is an expression of culture. It's an expression of power, education, experience, or lack thereof. It's a…

There is a place and a time for culture. Your electric bill is not one of them.

I disagree with your last paragraph. Speaking clearly and decisively is a good thing, and people will usually appreciate it. People become famous for speaking clearly. I remember some general made the rounds for his plain, no-nonsense COVID-19 address. I wish I could find it again.

I can only think of this scene right now.

https://youtu.be/Hhy7JUinlu0

Re: How to Write in Plain English

#117

Post by pbronez »

searchableguy wrote: post #72
dan-robertson wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saying the reason is “accessibility” suggests that it only helps people with poor literacy. There are two things to note: 1. Most people writing content will assume that their readers are like themselves or their social circle and will therefore have good literacy skills. However the actual proportion of people with poor (or even just not high) literacy skills is much higher than you might estimate from your social c…

> Government experts often say that because they’re writing technical or complex content for a specialist audience, they do not need to use plain English. This is wrong. > Research shows that higher literacy people prefer plain English because it allows them to understand the information as quickly as possible. > For example, research into use of specialist legal language in legal documents found: > 80% of people pre…

This makes total sense to me. Simple language makes room for complex ideas.

Re: How to Write in Plain English

#118

Post by smichel17 »

aembleton wrote: post #99
sharmi wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dunno, Ping me felt quite natural to me. It feels like a handy substitute for when there are multiple options for one person to contact another and person one does not care how he is contacted. As opposed to very formal communications that stick to email or mail. Ping me => email/call/slack/whatsapp/zulip/telegram/meet-in-person me

Wouldn't `contact me` do?

It lacks some connotation. "Remind me" comes closer. "Get my attention" probably captures it, but "ping me" is much shorter.

Re: How to Write in Plain English

#119

Post by brain5ide »

darkerside wrote: post #105
vidarh wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of philosophy essays are written as part of the writer being in the process of trying to figure things out for themselves, without quite having gotten there yet.

This is why second drafts exist

We had this joke.

A meeting of faculty heads is taking place. The topic - funding. The chairman says: "Hey, physicists, why are you so expensive? You need all those gadgets and materials to perform your experiments. Look at the mathematicians. All they need to produce a research paper are a box of paper, a box of pencils, and a trash can." "We don't even need trash cans, sir." announces the dean of Philosophy.

Re: How to Write in Plain English

#120

Post by 082349872349872 »

ralphstodomingo wrote: post #39

I'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.

https://web.archive.org/web/20151212223141/http://www.poynte... argues for technology, in the form of the telegraph.

> "Consider the leisurely style of British correspondent William Howard Russell in his coverage of the Battle of Balaklava in 1854.

    If the exhibition
    of the most brilliant valor,
    of the excess of courage, and
    of a daring
    which would have reflected luster
    on the best days of chivalry
    can afford full consolation
    for the disaster of today,
    we can have no reason
    to regret the melancholy loss
    which we sustained
    in a contest
    with a savage and barbarian enemy.
> Not until the end of the story does Russell get to the news: Because of a mix-up in orders a 650-man cavalry brigade charged head-on into enemy guns. In a few minutes more than 100 were dead. But Russell had no reason to write an urgent story because it would take nearly three weeks for his dispatch to reach his readers by boat and train and spread news of “The Charge of the Light Brigade."

It's not that the style was unknown (Tacitus' prose was flattened compared with Cicero's) but that it wasn't expected in asynchronous long-form writing. In a different genre, compare Cooke's easily tweetable summary of Custer's 1876 command:

> "Benteen. Come On. Big Village. Be Quick. Bring Packs. P.S. Bring Packs."

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