When I first started in this industry nearly three decades ago, I thought the terms ‘plain language’ and ‘plain English’ were synonymous. Writing professionals from Canada often talked about ‘plain language’ because they dealt with both French and English, but in countries like Australia, New Zealand, USA and Britain the term ‘plain English’ was more common. (By the way, Canada has a long and rich history encouraging plain writing – since the 1920s the Royal Bank of Canada newsletter has provided helpful advice about writing clearly.)

But over the decades I’ve observed a subtle shift; a shift in emphasis or focus.

Plain English professionals tend to focus on features of the language. They aim to make documents clear and concise. They talk about helpful techniques like using familiar words, preferring the active voice, writing with more verbs than nouns, keeping sentences short and writing in a conversational style.

Plain language professionals tend to focus more on readers and the way they respond to a document. They aim to make documents clear, concise and effective. They consider how the reader will encounter the document and the desired response. Plain language professionals see documents as information products, and so often incorporate user testing before publishing, just as we would for any other product.

Plain English professionals often concentrate on correctness; plain language professionals focus on usefulness.

Of course, the overlap between the two groups of professionals is vast. There is more that unites than divides. Plain language writers will use all the plain English techniques, and plain English writers always consider their readers. However, in my view, the gradual shift in focus is real.

The Australian Office of Parliamentary Counsel has said:

We prefer to use the term “plain language” rather than “plain English” because we believe that it covers a wider range of techniques and practices. (http://www.opc.gov.au/PLAIN/index.htm – link no longer active)

Even Wikipedia entries reflect this subtle difference in focus:

Plain English is language that is easy to understand, emphasizes clarity and brevity, and avoids overly complex vocabulary.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plain_English)

Plain language is writing designed to ensure the reader understands as quickly, easily, and completely as possible.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plain_language)

So what? Is this an artificial distinction and ‘splitting hairs’. I think not. The difference is important, especially when writing functional business documents. Writing clear and concise text is not the goal. Effective communication is the goal – and that requires a deliberate focus on readers and usability. Readers should both understand the content and know what to do with it. Functional documents are not just about informing; they aim to impact the way readers think, feel and act.

Greg Pendlebury

If you cannot easily read and understand a document or website, it is broken. Don’t accept it. Don’t be pressured to sign it, agree to it or use it.

A business or government document is an information product. You would not put up with a car that doesn’t run, or a chair that falls over. Neither should you accept an information product that does not perform its designed function.

Business and government documents and websites are designed to convey information that people need to act on. Fact sheets, contracts, agreements, advice letters all perform a function – they are designed to do something. So they need to work, and work well.

We should rightly expect information products to be easy to use, just like any other well designed product. You should be able to read the document easily and extract the information you need quickly. Do not think you are stupid if you can’t – it’s likely the fault of the document.

So what could you do when you encounter a difficult document? Ask the document owner to rework the information product so that it is easy to use. Push back. Demand to understand!

The terms of reference of the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry states

All Australians have the right to be treated honestly and fairly in their dealings with banking, superannuation and financial services providers.

People are not treated fairly when information about financial products is written poorly. People cannot make good decisions when they cannot easily read and understand Financial Services Guides, contracts and other documents.

Difficult writing disadvantages people.

It would be useful for the commission to look at the role poor documentation plays in disadvantage. It is well within their remit as it considers:

Whether any conduct, practices, behaviour or business activities by financial services entities fall below community standards and expectations.

Corporations law says that Financial Services Guides and other documents must be written so that they are ‘clear, concise and effective’. Many documents in the financial services space fail to meet this basic requirement.

Service providers can develop documents with the best intent in the world; but if they judge suitability from their own perspective they will come up short. The suitability of a document can only truly be judged from the readers’ perspective.

The best way write any document about financial products is to write it in plain language. This way of writing presents information so that most readers can understand. It avoids jargon, unfamiliar words and complex sentence structure. It simply talks about the topic in a straightforward manner.

No one would consider releasing a physical product to the market without testing it first. From motor vehicles to pencils, it’s hard to think of a product that has not been tested throughout its design and production.

To not test would be reckless. The product could fail in some way, perhaps harming consumers or damaging the organisation’s reputation in some way.

But when it comes to information products, printed or web documents, many are released with only minimal review. Rarely do organisations rigorously test their documents to check comprehension and impact. Usually, documents are reviewed by a handful of managers and then sent out.

The underlying arrogance says ‘If we think it is OK, it must be.’ To release an information product in that way, to release any product like that, is reckless.

• An untested document may not be read. For a document to be effective, it must be read (thank you Captain Obvious). If you can’t get people to read your document, all is lost.
• An untested document may not be understood. A good document conveys ideas, quickly and easily, . from one person to another. It’s vital to test ideas are being received properly.
• An untested document may not be acted on. Test the impact on the thinking, attitudes, behaviour of readers. How else will you know whether all the writing and review effort has been worthwhile?

Reckless writing: Preparing a document without a deliberate and considered concern for readers, or a writer failing to apply their mind to consider how a document will be understood.

The extent of your testing will be determined by the complexity of your document, your users and what they need to do with the document, and the risk of not understanding or acting on the document.

If you choose not to test, then you are relying solely on own judgement. That could be both arrogant and reckless.

You won’t use all these ideas for every document. Choose the ones most suitable for your purpose.

1. Ask for comments about the document.
   Ask: What did you think? Did all that make sense?
   Sometimes general, unspecific questions can reveal useful insights about the document.
2. Use readability formulae
   Tests like the Flesch-Kincaid grade level and the Flesch reading ease score are good basic indicators of the complexity of the text. But they are mechanical indicators only and don’t consider context.
3. Conduct a structured interview
   Ask questions like: What do you think this means?Anything you are unsure about? What confused you? What did you expect to find? Any sentences you needed to read twice?
   Structure your questions around the document’s purpose.
4. Devise a multiple choice test
   This will likely focus on testing understanding of the content.
   These tests are easy on participants. However, they may not pick up all the issues with the document, only those predicted by the questioner.
5. Set some problems to solve
   Ask users to solve a real scenario to be solved by reading the document.
   For example, when testing understanding of a will, you could ask something like: ‘You, your wife and your second son dies. What happens to your house?’
6. Set a full comprehension test
   This is an extension of a multiple choice test but may include free responses.
   Include questions like: How did you reach that conclusion? What did you find first before reaching your answer?
7. Response time tests
   Set some comprehension or scenario questions or both.
   Measure the time it takes users to find the correct answer in the document.
8. Fill in the gaps
   Remove every 5th or 6th word – users fill in missing word from the context.
   This tests overall understanding of the document.
9. Paraphrase the document
   Ask users to tell the message of the document back to you, as though they were explaining it to a friend.
   This tests overall understanding and whether the document is likely to achieve its intended purpose.
10. Think aloud
    Ask the user to read each sentence, one at a time, aloud. Ask them to explains their reactions or thoughts after each sentence.
    This will help you understand your users’ thought processes as they read the document.

User centred communication has at its core a desire to make information easy to find, easy to understand and easy to act on.

If users cannot find the information they need quickly, or if they cannot easily understand what they read, they will likely give up. Potential customers could go to information provided by your competitor. Workers may make up procedures themselves, making work instructions worthless and destroying quality assurance.

Organising information in a way that makes sense to the user is essential. Expressing your thoughts clearly and in familiar language makes contact with your reader.

User based communication is very different to the information dump approach — “I’ll tell you all that I know and you figure out what you need from that.” Surprisingly, such a cumbersome approach is still common, particularly in internal documents.

Writing for the user increases the likelihood that the material will be read, understood and acted on. It’s worth the extra effort.

Write for your reader

• How will the reader discover this information?
• Will they be looking for an answer to a specific question they have, or just reading for interest?
• What are they likely to be doing when they go looking for information?
• What will the reader do with the information?
• Do they need to follow a procedure you are describing?
• Do they need to combine this information with other information? Where will they get this from?
• How can you organise this in a way that makes sense to your reader?
• How are the ideas related? (In general, it is best to start with the ‘big picture’ before moving into detail. )
• What do your readers already know about this topic?
• How can you organise this into chunks? (Use headings to separate the chunks, use paragraphs to further organise the chunks.)
• What can you safely leave out? (Readers find it tiresome to wade through text that has no relevance to their interest or needs.)

When you start writing:

• Get straight to the point.
• Use words familiar to your reader.
• Keep sentences short and simple. Each sentence should usually cover only one point.
• Use the active voice and avoid the passive voice.
• Write directly to your audience i.e. use ‘we’ and ‘you’.
• Use verbs (action words), not nouns made from verbs.
• Use simple, short words.

Functional documents demand purposeful communication.

Traditional models of communication have understanding as the goal of communication. A person constructs an idea, codes into media (speech, text, images) transmits it. The receiver decodes and reconstructs as a new idea. Feedback and re-transmitting continues until both the sender and the receiver have the same idea. That is, the aim is a shared understanding. But that is not good enough for functional documents.

Purposeful communication starts by asking ‘Why?”.

The purpose of all business communication is to impact the thinking, attitudes or behaviour of readers in some way. We write to achieve a business purpose.

For example, marketing communication aims, ultimately, to get people to buy from you. Policies and procedures aimed to cause people to act in a particular way.

Purposeful communication goes beyond understanding and effectively transmitting ideas. It is more about influence.

So, the simplest way of testing any communication piece is to look at your audience. Are they doing what you wanted them to do? Are they moving towards doing what you want? Is your document achieving purpose?

Define purpose before you write

It’s best to know what you are trying to achieve before starting any activity. Your purpose in writing depends on the type of organisation you are.

For a business, its ultimate purpose is probably to make a profit. (But there will be other important things like ensuring its employees work safely, protecting the environment and the like.) A business will have other aims and objectives related to its purpose like increasing market share, keeping quality on track, or improving the skills of its employees. Effective purposeful communication will work to support these aims and objectives.

For a government agency or some other type of organisation, its purpose will be  related to fulfilling its mission. That mission may be to provide good roads or to administer taxes fairly or to provide care services to a part of the community. These organisations also have lower aims and objectives that are related to their higher purpose.

Workplace communication aims to enhance the business performance of the organisation. Purposeful communication enables and energises employees to carry out strategic intent. Communication is a means, not an end.

Can you know a document will achieve purpose before it is published?

Sensible user testing gives good insights and can help you avoid reckless writing. Communication products, like all products, should be tested before being released.

Can you always define purpose up front?

Purpose sometimes changes as you get into a project. Often you start with something particular in mind but it changes as you become more familiar with the needs of the user and the evolving environment.

Never! – unless all you want to do is meet some legal obligation. In that case, who cares if no-one reads or understands? But if you want people to read, understand and act on your message, you must do more than merely tell. You must tell in a way that makes sense to your readers and makes contact with them.

We’ve probably all seen “I’ve told you” messages. It’s clear that the writer doesn’t really care too much about their reader. These pompous writers force the reader to work hard unscrambling thoughts and making sense of poorly structured, poorly worded text. Often they deliberately use jargon, cumbersome expressions or lofty words in an effort to impress the reader. Sometimes these writers are deliberately obscure, so that they can say “gotcha” when the reader misunderstands.

You are probably reading text like this whenever you feel you are getting lost, whenever you have to re-read sentences and paragraphs to extract meaning.

Good writers make life easy for the reader. They work hard to help people read, understand and act on information.

Effective communicators take on the responsibility for helping others understand. They don’t shove this responsibility on the reader.

To do this they work hard to see things from the readers’ perspective. They put themselves in the readers’ shoes, asking searching questions before they put finger to keyboard. They ask things like:

• why should the reader read this?
• what information are they most interested in?
• how will this message link with what readers already know?
• what words and sentence structures are my readers familiar with?
• what do readers need to do with this information? what actions or decisions will follow?

They then write from the readers’ point of view.

 “Writing is not about you, it’s about your reader. The sooner you can take yourself out of the picture and focus on doing good for your reader, the quicker you’ll be a good writer.” Michael Masterton

You’ve slaved away for weeks on an important document. You’ve researched and talked to people. You’ve worked hard to understand your audience, their needs and how they will use your work. You’ve carefully structured the content into sensible chunks and you’ve used plain language techniques as you’ve crafted the text.

But, will the document work? Will it achieve the goals you had in mind?

It’s time for the document review and test phase. Time to find out what other people think of your work. Or perhaps time to send it ‘upstairs’ for sign-off.

Too often authors simply e-mail the document around to colleagues in the office with a message like “I’ve written this. What do you think?” If they don’t hear anything back they assume it’s all OK. But a review process like this rarely provides confidence that the document will communicate effectively. In fact, such a sloppy document review process could be reckless writing. (Our writer training course can reduce costly review churn.)

All communication products should be tested well before release, just like any other product. (Why don’t we test information products?)

So, when you ask people to review a document focus on assessing how well the document will achieve purpose. Try these five steps:

1. Develop thick skin.

People may suggest improvements to your writing (and, by implication, improvements to your thinking). It’s easy to become defensive about the structure and words you have used. Don’t be. If someone finds your message is unclear then you need to improve it.

2. State your purpose clearly; explain your audience.

People can only provide useful review comments when they know what the document is intending to do, and who it is aimed at. When asking for review, explain who the document is for, and how you would like people to respond to your document. Judge the feedback you receive in the light of your purpose and audience.

3. Identify real users.

Representatives of your target audience are the best people to tell you how well your document will work. Anybody else is guessing (although experienced reviewers usually guess well).

4. Prepare document review questions.

Questions helps reviewers engage with the material. For example:

• Does this document contain information or ideas that are important to you?
• Can you easily find the information you need?
• Once you find the information, can you understand it?
• Does it tell you too much? Does it tell you too little?
• Is the information correct? Could it be misleading?
• Does it comply with the law (if relevant) and our internal standards (if they exist)?
• Do you know what to do now that you have read this?

5. Make feedback easy

Tell people how to get their comments to you. Do you want them to talk to you about the document, email you some ideas, or insert their comments in your text? And tell reviewers when you expect their comments.

You don’t need to act on all the review comments. Exercise judgement – some comments will be helpful, some will not. Use feedback to improve your writing, but don’t be bullied by it. After all, it’s your document, so take ownership of it.

We often need to write a document that sells an idea, product or service – perhaps a brochure, funding submission or proposal to work in a new way. Keep these 3 Ps in mind.

1. Purpose

Be sure you know what you expect your document to do.

In most businesses it is highly unusual for someone to say “I’ve read your brochure, here’s my credit card.”

In most cases your document is a part of the sales or influence process. The best it can usually do is to move someone to the next step – perhaps to make an enquiry or to get further information.

The content of your document should be designed just to move them that step. Usually it should not be filled with lots of detail – leave that for later.

A clear purpose is the starting point of clear communication.

2. Promise

Make your reader a promise. A promise that captures their imagination or that scratches where they itch.

For example: buy my widget and I promise to triple your income; or halve your operating costs; or drop 3 dress sizes. Your reader must be clear about what your product or service or idea can do for them, and it must do something that they are interested in, and that they value.

There are many ways of making a promise; you don’t have to say the words ‘I promise’, but you can. You could say “9 out of 10 business grow when they xyz”, by implication yours will too. Or use a bold statement like “The 3 Ps of effective brochures” – a promise that if you put my ideas to work your brochures will generate more sales.

Choosing the right way to phrase your promise depends on a good knowledge of your audience.

3. Proof

Anybody can make a promise, but readers are interested in knowing that you can deliver on what you say. We’ve all been let down and disappointed by broken promises.

So spend some time in your document proving you can deliver on your promises. You could:

• explain your product and how it works
• quote from scientific studies
• talk about your experience and expertise
• provide testimonials from satisfied customers
• compare your idea with alternatives

But don’t overdo proof. Provide just enough to show you are credible.

When writing documents intended to influence people’s thinking or behaviour, remember and use the three Ps.

And one R – respect.

Never bully your audience or treat them as fools. Write in language they can understand, address issues that concern them and view your communication from their perspective.