Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pronunciation changes meaning too. "i didn't say he stole the money." this doesn't say much, but when a word is stressed takes on a new meaning, so one should be careful to capture the stress in writing. I didn't say he stole the money. - someone else said it, not me i DIDN'T say he stole the money. - you think I said it, it wasn't me. i didn't SAY he stole the money. - I never said such a thing, might have suggested…
I always find it weird that English texts and speach tend to emphasis different word in sentence that I am used to in my mother tongue. In Polish it's simple, just like in your example, the word that is in bold is the one you are trying to get attention to. But in practice I hear often in English media and books something completely else, where a word next to it has the accent/emphasis, not the one that is CLEARLY ar…
How to Write in Plain English
261–270 of 327 posts
Re: How to Write in Plain English
#262Re: How to Write in Plain English
#263English vs. business English. Pre-boarding is just boarding. Pre-booking is just booking. Pre-prefixing everything. Sigh. "Please revert" - you mean 'reply', not 'return to a former state'. "Ping me" - ugh. And my favourite.... "Learnings" - you mean lessons. "What drivings have you been on?" ... "What journeys have you been on?"
"We should socialize the learnings from this discussion." Is close to a real sentence pronounced upon us from a management type during one of their endless Zoom meetings. Someone sent in a semi-private chat shared by some of us, "They meant, we should share what we've learned."
I feel like we worked for the same company. Last time I heard this exact phrase I was participating in a meeting where one of the agenda points was feedback from a meeting about meetings.
Result: we scheduled another meeting.
Important question: did we deliver value?
Re: How to Write in Plain English
#264Writing 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…
Re: How to Write in Plain English
#265Re: How to Write in Plain English
#266https://www.gov.uk/guidance/content-design/writing-for-gov-u...
As does the US federal government:
Re: How to Write in Plain English
#267Writing 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…
Diffusing bomb model AX72 steps:
- Cut the blue wire.
- But first cut the red wire.Re: How to Write in Plain English
#268Clearly, the reader just wants to get the information that is relevant for them personally, with the least cognitive effort. Then move on with their day or to the next step in their workflow.
The company/government can have various incentives on various levels of the hierarchy/bureaucracy.
The boss/owner may want the company to communicate in a snappy, hip, youthful way, in a friendly and clear tone with no bullshit.
However, the person/department actually writing the text may want to deflect responsibility, avoid possibilities for blame, keep things vague enough so the onus is on the customer/citizen to make sure everything will work out. They don't want to deviate from process. The customers/citizens should be uniform with no exceptions, because exceptions cause work. If you write too friendly, people will assume they can get favors, that we can start bargaining because they are talking to a real person. Text written in a cold, dispassionate, bureaucratic style will not invite such answers. It signals that things are set in stone, that there is a process in place and we won't say A or B, they will have to figure our A vs. B themselves.
For example, I'm a teaching assistant at a university. If I'm buried under too much work with research and get lots of complicated questions from students, I give vague answers so I can't get blamed ("But XY said it would work out this way!"). Also if I use a bunch of official words and formal sentence structure, the student gets the message that I won't do the work instead of them: there can be tons of different rules interacting, different study programs have different rule books etc. In the end it's their responsibility. I cannot give definitive answers, but experience shows, that writing things plainly often invites more haggling than writing in an official tone.
The same thing happens when people talk about medical, legal and other potentially dangerous topics. Even if the actual answer is straightforward and will apply in 99% of the cases, nobody gets fired for being too cautious. "Nah don't do that" is the easiest thing to say. Ask your doctor. Ask an attorney. Check the laws of your region.
To write plain and clear text, you need to leave all these caveats out. But people will jump at every opportunity to try to shift the blame, and if you weren't careful, it will accumulate on your desk. To avoid this, orgs and lawmakers should make sure to reduce the legal responsibility for saying things.
For example I know a(n underpaid) lawyer working for a governmental institution in Hungary. They are in the communications department and give advice on certain legal things to ordinary citizens phoning in or over email. Fortunately, the laws and rules are set up such that they cannot be blamed for answering wrong or not hedging enough, they can write as they would to a family member. It's not "legal advice", because you can't know all circumstances from just an email question. At best, the person or company who acts on such advice can use the email exchange to demonstrate due diligence. They at least tried. Still, it's fully their responsibility to check and interpret the law.
Therefore, unless you shield your writers/departments from blame by similar explicit rules, they will shield themselves through vaguery and hedging and complicated writing.
Re: How to Write in Plain English
#269It is not only the sheer pleasure of reading language used to its utmost, an indulgence found in the enduring literary accomplishments of Shakespeare or Dickens but somewhat lacking in the trendier, reportorial style of a Hemingway (who, after a hundred years, it seems safe to say has not reached the same level of immortal acclaim), but also if I may venture, a particular suitability to the kind of digressive, meande…
Re: How to Write in Plain English
#270Earlier 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…