Get your message across with plain English
Plain English is writing essential information in a way that provides a good chance of understanding the document at first reading and in the same sense that the writer meant it to be understood. It does not mean always using simple words at the expense of the most accurate words or writing whole documents in nursery school language.
Plain means easy to understand, not over-simplified.
To make plain writing effective, plan your piece before you write it. Consider the reader and what they will expect to get from it and organise your material in a way that helps readers to grasp the important information quickly and to navigate through the document easily.
Tips for writing in plain English
Keep sentences short:
- Average sentence length should be 15 to 20 words.
- Shorter sentences are effective.
- Use lists and headings.
Use familiar words:
- Seek out unusual words or jargon and replace with plainer alternatives.
- Use only as many words as you really need.
- Wordiness often comes from trying to make a simple procedure sound impressive.
- Rewrite completely if necessary.
- An active voice improves readability and comprehension.
Accurate punctuation:
- The main use of a full stop/ period is to show where a sentence ends.
- Single commas act as separators between parts of a sentence
- A pair of commas separates information that acts as an aside, explanation, or addition.
- Colons have three main purposes: to introduce a vertical list or a running-text list; to act as a ‘why-because’ marker which leads the reader from one idea to its consequence; to separate two sharply contrasting and parallel statements which are part of the same sentence.
- To use semicolons safely you need to satisfy two criteria: the statements separated by the semicolons could stand alone and as separate sentences; the topics mentioned in the two statements are closely related.
Online readability tools
Here is a selection of really useful online readability tools to help check if your text or website is clear and easy to read:
JoesWeb Tools Readability Test
Many of the above use the respected Flesch-Kincaid readability algorithm to assess how easy or difficult it is to read text.
