Many people question what “plain English” means. Some feel strongly that it suggests basic writing that doesn’t suit difficult topics or clever people. At its worst, it leads to banning words that don’t fit a prescribed plain lexicon.
This may explain why senior people tend to avoid plain English training. They are usually competent writers and prefer not to spend a day on basic skills such as using active voice verbs and short sentences. But when a senior person attends a good writing course and encourages clear language in their organisation, great things can happen. Staff start to see the benefits of clear, relevant writing and feel they can move away from the officialese, management-speak or simple wordiness that may have clogged their communication for years.
Much plain English training often crudely contrasts ancient bureaucratic language with much crisper passages. It’s entertaining, but doesn’t meet modern business writing needs. The course materials can be ancient, sometimes decades rather than years old. We use tailored, relevant materials that demonstrate current good writing in a client’s field of work, and we always make some dedicated materials from each client’s own documents.
We cover plain English skills, but also spend plenty of time on more subtle areas. These include deciding why a document needs to be written, how to shape it for the intended reader, how to use jargon sensibly, and how to avoid abrasiveness, defensiveness, ambiguity, and unnecessary or incomplete detail.
Being clear and a bit imaginative about these areas helps authors create content; strong content helps them structure their material and decide the tone of a document. It’s the tone (or ‘tone of voice’) that often decides how readers receive and respond to a message.
Complex topics sometimes demand complex language. Further, English is a subtle language with wide resources that help us communicate intelligently and effectively. Worrying about whether our average sentence length is more than 18 words, how many words of more than two syllables we have used, and whether we have more than one passive verb in three lines isn’t going to take us far towards good writing.
Good language should speak clearly and effectively to the reader, but shouldn’t demean the writer. For example, the simple syntax and diction in a public leaflet might not suit a lengthy proposal or report. In such documents information, perhaps about technical points, needs to be arranged and expressed using the best language for the purpose and the reader. That language can be plain, complex, literal, metaphorical, poetic or prosaic. Plain English skills are only part of achieving true clarity.
