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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Well, our 4th technique is around sentences. It’s actually a few things to say about sentences, but the big idea is we want short single point sentences.
One thought, one sentence
The people who study these things tell us that as we read our eyes go along the line and we store up the words in our short term or in our working memory. When we hit a full stop, there’s a brief pause and we create meaning out of those words that we’ve stored. If I load up my sentence with lots of different ideas and lots of different thoughts, it’s going to increase the cognitive load on the reader. It just makes it harder than it needs to be.
So the idea of one thought one sentence is a really powerful idea. And that means as you write, it’s really good to keep an eye out for joining words, words like ‘and, so, because’. Those types of words are words we use to join different ideas together. Also have a look out for lots of commas in your sentences. Lots of different clauses. That’s another way that we can load up sentences with lots of different ideas.
Now I’ll ask you to have a go at reading the text that’s on the screen right now. My guess is that as you started to read this sentence, you probably got through the first line or line and 1/2 or something like that, and then you started to have a little bit of trouble. You started to reread or started to wonder what this sentence was all about. You may have even started to wonder about your own competence. Is there something wrong with you? Why can’t I understand this sentence? What’s giving me such problems?
Well, let me assure you there’s nothing wrong with you. There’s actually something wrong with the way this sentence has been put together. It is a really long sentence. It has 72 words, but the big problem is that all these ideas are being pushed into a single sentence. And as you encounter them, you get one idea after the other, they tumble over each other, and you don’t get any time to consolidate one idea before you move on to the other idea. And that’s what is making it really hard. There are no full stops here. All the ideas have been mushed together.
And remember, if you are doing this course, you are a good reader. Think about how a poor reader might encounter a sentence like this. I suspect they wouldn’t have any hope at all.
It comes across as though it’s really sophisticated thinking, really clever stuff, only really smart people could understand this. But when you separate out the ideas, it’s really not that difficult.
So pretty much all I’ve done now is to put some full stops in.
This policy establishes standards for all assets under the control of council. Yeah, I get that idea. That’s not too hard.
Next idea. The standards will be a reasonably safe condition, the highest standard in condition that council can reasonably afford. Well, look, I’ve got a thought and a half there, but I still get it. That’s fine.
Next Idea. Council has determined these standards after considering all of its circumstances, including … And I get a whole long list of things there, but I’m still OK.
So putting some full stops in makes the ideas much easier to understand. I’ve got one thought, one sentence. I can understand the idea before I move on to another idea.
And just before we leave this example, this is actually an example of the curse of knowledge. I know the bloke who wrote that original sentence. He has many decades of experience in the area of risk management for local government and he writes a sentence like that and says, well, that’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with that. And there wasn’t anything wrong with that for him. But there was for the rest of us.
Bullet points can separate ideas
Of course, there are other ways of separating ideas in sentences. Yes, you could have a sentence like this which has got all the ideas mushed in together with some commas separating them. But the other way of separating ideas is to use bullet points.
And so we’ll talk about the objectives were to obtain and characterise and search. And yes, I know, technically that’s still a single sentence. But using the bullet points separates out the ideas and makes it much easier to understand.
But of course, sometimes we have multiple thoughts in a sentence
Well, while I’ve been saying single thought in each sentence, one thought one sentence. Of course there will be times when you will use multiple thoughts in a sentence. And you’ll do that because there’s a reason we might have a cause and consequence, or perhaps contrasting or amplifying ideas. Or maybe you just want to do it because reading single point, single point, single point, single point is really jerky for your reader. So you might want to just change it to make it a bit easier for them to read.
So I guess the idea now is one thought, one sentence – unless you have a reason for more. Don’t just allow your sentences to continue rolling on as your thoughts continue to roll on. One thought, one sentence. But yes, I know there will be times when you will have multiple thoughts in a sentence for a particular reason.
Point first in sentences
If you are going to write 2 points in a sentence, think about the order in which you place those ideas. So have a look at these two sentences:
The first one To make more of these courses available to potential bike riders in NSW, DECC is offering cycling training vouchers in partnership with Auscycle. The second sentence: DECC is offering cycling training vouchers in partnership with Auscycle to make more of these courses available to potential bike riders in New South Wales.
It’s identical information in both sentences. But the first sentence emphasises that more courses are available – that’s what comes first in the sentence. The second sentence emphasises what DECC is doing – that’s what comes first in the sentence.
So you can use this idea of point first to change the emphasis in what you are communicating. So this idea of point first is a really big and powerful idea. We’ve seen that it works at the overall document structure level. It also works at the paragraph level, and it even works at this sentence level.
Now let me show you a structure, a sentence structure that I think is really difficult on your readers. Now I know the content comes from the environment space, so that might be a little bit foreign to you. But what we’re doing is we’re looking at the way this sentence has been put together.
While there be an ongoing key role for species specific plans to bring high profile species back from the brink of extinction, most recovery outcomes depend on integrating … and on it goes.
The main point of the sentence is around most recovery outcomes depend on integrating, but look at where that is in the sentence. It’s halfway through. What the writer is expecting you as the reader to do is to hold this ‘by the way information’ that they’ve provided for you at the beginning of the sentence, hold that ‘by the way information’ in your head until they get around to telling you the main point.
I think that’s a really difficult structure for your readers. I think it is far better to write point first and talk about how most recovery outcomes depend on integrating and then provide that ‘by the way information’ after that. And in this case it probably needed a separate sentence anyway.
Here’s another type of structure that I often see
Under section 137 of the local government regulation, Council can regulate or restrict water use …, and then it goes on to talk about how that can be done. The main point of that sentence, particularly if it’s going to the public, is around how council can regulate or restrict water use. But look where it is in the sentence. It’s all the way towards the end of the sentence. I think that makes it difficult for your reader.
And how do you expect your reader to react to that first part of the sentence? Do you expect them to say Ohh section 137 – you know, that’s actually my favourite section in that whole regulation. No, of course not. They’ve got absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. They don’t know anything about the detail of this regulation, and yet they’re being bombarded with this information that just puts them off and delays them getting to the main point.
I think with content like this, it is far better to write point first. So I’m going to write Council can manage water use by issuing notices to regulate or restrict, and then I’ll talk about how that’s possible. And if I want to talk about the authority under which Council is acting, well, that’s the secondary idea and I might put that at the bottom of that paragraph. In fact, I think it’s such a subordinate idea, I might have just included that as a footnote, and that could work well.
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