Plain language writing

What plain language is not

It is not writing for a child, and it is not removing detail. A plain page can be technically precise and completely thorough; what it avoids is making the reader work to extract the meaning.

It is also not shorter by definition. Explaining something properly in ordinary words sometimes takes more room than stating it in jargon, and that is a good trade every time.

The test is comprehension on first reading, by a person or by an answer engine summarizing the page. If somebody has to go back over a sentence to get it, the sentence failed regardless of how accurate it was.

Jargon costs you customers

Every trade has words that mean something precise inside it and nothing outside. Used on a customer-facing page they do not signal expertise; they signal that the page was written for somebody else.

The reader will not ask. They assume the answer is somewhere else and leave, and you never learn that the word was the reason, which is what makes this failure so persistent.

Where a term is genuinely necessary, define it the first time in the same sentence. That costs six words and turns an obstacle into a small demonstration of competence.

The habits that make writing plain

The list below is what separates a page a customer reads easily from one they give up on. None of it is about vocabulary alone; most of it is sentence shape.

• Say who does what, in that order
• Use the shortest word that is still accurate
• Keep one idea per sentence
• Define any necessary term in the same line
• Prefer verbs to abstract nouns
• Cut words that qualify without adding
• Read it aloud and fix what you stumble on

Verbs beat abstract nouns

We carry out an inspection of the system is longer and vaguer than we inspect the system. The abstract noun hides the action, and the sentence gets longer while saying less.

This single habit accounts for a large share of what makes business writing feel heavy. Turning the noun back into a verb usually shortens the sentence and sharpens it at the same time.

Hunt for words ending in tion, ment and ance. Most of them are verbs wearing a disguise, and most of them read better undisguised.

Say who does what

The work will be completed within the agreed timeframe tells the reader nothing about who is responsible. We finish within the time we agreed says the same thing and names the person accountable.

Passive constructions are where accountability goes to hide, which is why they are common in writing about things that went wrong. On a business site they read as evasive even when they are not.

Our page on honest claims covers the related point: a sentence nobody is the subject of is frequently a sentence nobody intends to stand behind.

How to test it

Read the page aloud. Every place you stumble, rephrase, or run out of breath is a place the reader would have slowed down, and the mouth finds these faster than the eye.

Then give it to somebody outside your trade and ask them to tell you what it said. What they leave out is what the page failed to communicate, whatever the words on it were.

Our page on proofreading covers the mechanical pass. Clarity and correctness are different jobs and the clarity one pays considerably better.

Where plainness matters most

Anywhere the reader is deciding or anxious. Pricing, what happens next, what is included, what to do in an emergency, and anything a customer reads while something has gone wrong.

Also anywhere with legal weight. A term nobody understood is a term nobody agreed to in any meaningful sense, whatever its status, and clarity protects both sides.

Our page on website copywriting covers the wider craft. Plain language is the foundation under all of it rather than one technique among several.