If you’ve worked with us to design a course, you’ve likely heard us talk about the importance of writing content in plain language. But what this means isn’t always immediately clear. Is it about writing at a certain grade level? Is it only for those with low literacy skills?
At its most basic level, plain language is clear communication. So, the simple answer to these questions is that clear communication is for everyone, regardless of literacy level or expertise.
Think about a legal contract or tax form that you need to understand before making an informed decision. It’s so much easier when these documents are written clearly and all the technical terms are explained, isn’t it?
The fact is that the more complex the subject, the more readers benefit from plain language. It makes documents easy to read and understand, reduces the need for clarification, and saves everyone time.
So, when we ask our clients to think about plain language, what are we talking about exactly?
For us, plain language is the art of transforming content, usually from a subject matter expert, into the language of our intended audience. It means that we’re paying attention to how we “talk” to our learners, and structuring content in a way that makes the information easy to find, use, and understand.
Here are some examples of what this looks like in the courses we help design:
- Knowing the Audience: When we develop courses using plain language, we focus on writing clearly for our intended audience. This means we strive to “talk” to our learners using their particular vocabulary and concepts. For example – writing for healthcare providers usually involves using more technical terms than writing for patients receiving hospital care. Our plain language writing will be slightly different in each case.
- Speaking to Learners: Once we know our audience, we can more easily address learners directly. We use pronouns like “we” and “you” to create a conversational tone, engage them, and draw the learner in.
- Chunking Content: Chunking content helps learners process information, store it in their long-term memory, and move on to the next topic. It also helps create a generous amount of white space on the page. We chunk content by keeping each paragraph to a single topic, using short and descriptive headings to label each chunk, and using bulleted or numbered lists.
- Writing Short, Direct Sentences: When writing sentences, we aim to keep the subject and verb close together and include only need-to-know information. This way, learners aren’t required to hold a lot of information in their memory while processing the content. It also helps keep our paragraphs concise.
- Using Active Voice: We try to write sentences using active voice (when the subject performs the action) because they are generally more direct and easier to understand. The alternative would be to use passive voice (when the subject receives the action), but this requires the reader to mentally translate a sentence into active voice before making sense of it.
- Choosing Short, Familiar Words: We try not to choose complicated words unnecessarily. Instead, we use the words and concepts that are as familiar and concrete as possible for our intended audience.
- Defining Uncommon Terms: When we need to use an unfamiliar or abbreviated word, we make sure to define it and then continue to use the same word or abbreviation throughout our content.
While there are so many more examples we could add to this list, this is a great start to understanding how we make our writing shine for our learners. Can you think of anything that you would add to this list?
To learn more about plain language, we recommend starting by visiting the International Plain Language Federation and the Plain Language Network.
And if you’re interested in working with us to help build your course, please reach out. We’d love to chat!
