This is a transcript of one of the videos in the plain language training course Writing well at work. There are references to slides and visual material that are only available by viewing the video.
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Simple, familiar words
The first idea about writing plainly is to use simple, familiar words.
Hippocrates many centuries ago made the comment that the chief virtue that language can have is clearness, and nothing detracts from it so much as the use of unfamiliar words.
So if we’re using words that people don’t know, we’re going to compromise clarity. We’re not going to have that shared meaning that we need to have to be able to transmit ideas.
So when we write, we want to write using familiar words. And often they will be short, simple, basic words. They are the words that most people use all the time and that they know. So they are the words that we want to select when we are writing.
Now I’ve displayed a slab of text on the screen for you. I’m going to read it as I do. I’d like you to be counting up all the words of more than one syllable.
When you come right down to it, there’s no law that says you have to use big words when you write or talk. There are lots of small words and good ones that can be made to say all the things you want to say quite as well as the big ones. It may take a bit more time to find them at first, but it can be well worth it for all of us, know what they mean. Some small words, more than you might think, are rich with the right feel or the right taste, as if made to help you say the thing the way it should be said. Small words can be crisp or sharp or brief or terse. They go straight to the point. Small words can dance or twist or turn or sing with a charm all their own. They are the grace notes of prose. You know what they say the way you know a day is bright and fair – at first sight. And you find as you read or as you hear, that you like the way small words can catch large thoughts and hold them up for all to see and hear. They are like rare stones in rings of gold or joy the eyes of a child. Small words can make you feel as well as see, the cold, deep, dark of night, or the hot salt sting of tears. Big words can bog down and get in the way of what you want to say. Small words move with these to say what you mean. For those who teach and for those who learn, small words are links in the chain. There’s not much in all our work that small words will not say, and say well.
So if you’ve been counting up all the words of more than one syllable, you would have found that there are none. They’re all single syllable words. It’s a very clever piece of writing because it demonstrates what it’s talking about. It demonstrates that you can write a reasonable slab of text using words of one syllable. But more than that, you can actually make a reasonably sophisticated argument using words of one syllable. What they’re saying here is really quite important, and they’re making a significant point.
I think the crux of the whole argument is captured in a sentence around about midway through that text: we know what these small words say the way we know a day is bright and fair – at first sight. These short, simple, and it’s really about them being familiar, these familiar words communicate meaning very, very quickly. And I suspect that might have something to do with the way we first learn language. When we’re tiny little people and we’re starting to learn language, as we start to make verbal sense of the world. We learn short, simple, basic words first. They are deeply embedded in our mind. And they communicate meaning very, very quickly.
I’ll get you to have a look at the first exercise that accompanies this unit. In this exercise, I’ve got a whole bunch of words. These are three or four syllables long. I’d like to see if you could find some alternatives that are one or two syllables long. Sometimes you might use 2 short words to capture the same or a similar meaning. Stop the video and have a go at that right now.
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