Written by: Jules Patalita
Writing can be difficult. I should know, I spend roughly half my time every week writing. Emails to partners, public comments to state agencies, testimony for Ohio Congress, informative materials for the Access Network, PowerPoints for our Employment Training (which you can still join for free by following this link: https://abilitycenter.org/employment-training/). For many people, one of the most difficult aspects of writing is explaining complex topics to someone new to the topic. Especially if you’re an expert in your field, or your field uses a lot of industry-specific jargon, it can be challenging to communicate your meaning without going over the knowledge-level of your audience and leaving them more confused than when they started reading. One of the best ways to ensure that your audience can understand your writing is to use something called “Plain Language.” This is a style of writing that centers around making the text as easy to comprehend as possible. Plain Language is most popular in Europe but is gaining momentum in the United States, especially in the disability community. This style of writing allows for better access to information, and allows all readers, with or without disability, to gain the full meaning of your documents. Today, we’ll be going over Plain Language, how to write in the style, and the benefits that it has beyond writing inclusively.
To address this at the beginning, this post is not written in Plain Language because I’m not skilled enough at the practice to do it properly. The Ability Center just had staff training on Plain Language, led by University of Toledo’s Dr. Rebecca Monteleone. She’s one of our region’s best experts on accessible writing, and I personally learned a lot from her. Her personal page on the UT website will be featured in the Resources section at the end of this post.
What is Plain Language?
Plain Language is more of a concept and a philosophy than specific guidelines that must be followed. There isn’t a specific grading criterion for determining if text is Plain Language or not. Instead, there is the understood goal of making the information more accessible and easier to comprehend, with certain principles that assist in this goal if followed correctly. This will help any reader better understand your writing, whether it is someone new to your field, a partner from another industry, or a potential client with no technical knowledge of your trade. Most experts say that you should aim for the material to be presented around a 6th to 8th Grade reading level, making it comprehensible to most literate American adults. But how do you go about writing at that level? Here is a list of traits that most Plain Language documents to utilize, and techniques for you to consider using in your own writing:
- Use simple sentence structure as much as possible
- A complex sentence may look like, “Tom went to the store for milk; but Sarah had already bought some that morning, so now they had too much.” A simple version could read, “Tom went to the store for milk. Sarah had already bought milk that morning. Now Tom and Sarah have too much milk.”
- Use an active tense when writing to make the sentence simpler and easier to follow.
- Instead of writing, “The chores were done by Bill,” say “Bill did the chores.”
- Avoid using jargon, acronyms, and other technical terms whenever possible.
- If you need to use a term that readers may not know, make sure to define it right away.
- If you use a pronoun (he, they, it, etc.), make sure that you specify who that pronoun refers to.
- Instead of “The keys belong to him,” say “The keys belong to Simeon.”
- Make the formatting of the document more accessible.
- These are simple elements to add to any text and can include using larger and bolder fonts, having wide-enough margins, making sure there is a high contrast between the text and their background, and using an accessible font style.
- Bulleted lists are a good substitute for long lists.
- This section would have been a long, boring paragraph to read through. Making it into a bulleted list makes it faster and easier to read through.
A big part of writing in Plain Language is you asking the question, “What assumptions am I making about my readers?” Are you assuming they know what the ADA is when you use the acronym? Do you assume they understand Couldry’s theory of figurations when you go into a discussion of social influences on media creation? Have you written at a college reading level and assumed your audience can keep up? The best way to approach Plain Language is to have the mindset that your reader has no knowledge on the subject; that means you’ll need to explain basics, define any new terms, and write at a level and pace that’s easy to follow the first time.
What is not Plain Language?
Even though I said that there isn’t 100% agreement on “what is Plain Language,” it’s easier to talk about “what isn’t Plain Language.” For how broad the concept is (making your writing easier to comprehend), there are many pitfalls you can fall into during your attempt at making writing that’s understandable to any audience. Probably the easiest mistake to make is thinking that Plain Language means summarizing or shortening your content. Many think that making text more understandable means giving less information, only communicating the most important parts of the message. Unfortunately, this leads to the same negative result of some readers not getting the full message. Even when taking an existing document and “translating” it into Plain Language, the new version should feature all of the same information, just in a manner that’s easier to comprehend.
Going alongside this, Plain Language is almost never shorter than if you’d written the same content in your usual style. Taking every complex sentence and turning them into two or three simple sentences, defining every new term, and using proper names instead of floating pronouns takes up much more space on a page. It can also take more time to write, both from needing to break everything down and from the extra effort of writing in a different manner. Plain Language is not a good option if you’re most concerned with saving space on a page, but it will save readers time as they speed through your context with more ease.
Another common mistake for people new to Plain Language is thinking that they need to “dumb down” the content. While Plain Language is a great accommodation for many people with cognitive disabilities, these readers should still be treated as adults; Plain Language being written “around a 6th grade reading level” does not mean the audience should be thought of as children. This is insulting to your readers and not a healthy mindset when thinking about adults with disabilities. Making the information easier to understand is the goal, but that shouldn’t come at the cost of simplifying the text to the point that you lose meaning from it. It also doesn’t mean that mature topics in the text should be censored or removed.
Finally, Plain language is not perfect, or a guarantee that every reader will fully understand your writing. Any confusion can come from a wide range of sources. Maybe a term you use has multiple meanings and the reader misunderstands the context you use it in. There are many cases where, even if your Plain Language is effective and you do everything right, there’s still a disconnect between you and the audience. That isn’t a failure of you, or the reader. Sometimes someone will still have questions afterwards, and that’s perfectly fine. I suggest adding your contact information to the end of any documents that the public will read, so they can go to you directly with questions about your materials. The end goal of Plain Language is to make sure your audience understands what your write; if that means answering questions afterwards, you’ve still accomplished the goal of being properly informing the reader.
Using Images and Icons Effectively
A quick note here, but there are recommendations surrounding the use of images and graphics for Plain Language documents. In general, you want any images used to add context to the text it is closest to. We often use images to add context to documents, but we also use them to decorate and make the material “prettier.” These can be distracting, but they can also confuse readers who may not understand how the image relates to the text. If you use any images, they should directly relate to the text and help with understanding. That means any images or icons used should be simple enough that their meaning can be immediately understood by the reader. Plain Language is about making materials easier to understand right away, so I suggest cutting any images that don’t work towards that end goal.
It’s About More Than Just Disability
Obviously, The Ability Center supports Plain Language because it enables reading comprehension for a wider audience, including those with cognitive disabilities. Plain Language, however, doesn’t just support the disability community. Making your writing easier to read and understand is a useful skill for anyone, whether it’s for public-facing documents or even emails to team members. The core of Plain Language is making your content easy to understand the first time someone reads it. This saves the reader time from not having to reread the same paragraph multiple times and saves you time from not having to answer questions about what your point was. This is especially important when trying to write for an audience outside of your usual network, or with partners that aren’t in your industry. When you become an expert in your field, it can be easy to forget just how much youknow on a topic compared to the average person. We use acronyms daily until we forget that we need to tell strangers what those letters stand for. We use jargon from daily operations to the point that we remember it in our sleep but forget that no one outside of your facility knows what the term means. But you can’t expect to never have to communicate with someone who doesn’t fully grasp your job. That’s a big benefit of Plain Language, because it takes away much of the struggle of writing to an audience with less knowledge on the subject.
Conclusion
Plain Language can be a difficult style of writing to adapt to at first, but the benefits that come with it make it worth the effort. Clients will better understand your services and the work you do, with less questions about your process and results. Partners will have a better idea of the work you do and will represent you better when they talk about you in their own networks. Most importantly, your writing won’t accidentally exclude anyone from reading and taking in the information. People with cognitive disabilities are often left out of conversations because they aren’t presented with materials that can be comprehended easily. With Plain Language, any reader is a potential audience, and that allows your writing to reach much wider audiences than before.
Resources
Autism Self Advocacy Society, One Idea Per Line guide:
https://autisticadvocacy.org/resources-3/accessibility/easyread/
Digital.gov, Plain Language Guide Series:
https://digital.gov/guides/plain-language
Inclusive Europe, Information for All: European Standards for Making Information Easy to Read and Understand:
https://www.inclusion-europe.eu/easy-to-read-standards-guidelines/
Mencap, Am I Making Myself Clear:
http://funding4sport.co.uk/downloads/guidelines_for_accessible_writing.pdf
The Plain Truth Project:
https://www.plaintruthproject.org
University of Toledo, Dr. Rebecca Monteleone:
https://www.utoledo.edu/jhc/about/faculty/rebecca-monteleone
