Writing with plain language generates value by making understanding accessible. 

In a world that’s overflowing with information, we need to make sure the content we’re creating brings real value to the people who use it. When information is hard to find, vague, dense, or filled with complex terminology, we can’t understand it. This leaves people feeling frustrated and may lead to misunderstanding. Paying attention to the barriers we build into information and removing as many of them as possible makes our information accessible to more people and enhances its value. Luckily, there’s already a roadmap for this using plain language guidelines. When plain language is combined with sound information architecture, these two approaches give you the power to bring clarity, understanding, and alignment to your information.

Step 1: Write for your audience

The key to clear communication is knowing who your audience is and tailoring your information to their level. Making a pitch to a panel of executives and troubleshooting software with a client are two very different audiences, and they require different types of communication. Aligning the tone, format, and complexity level of your content with your audience’s expectations will enhance the clarity of your message.

Step 2: Organize your information

Once you’ve got a good idea of how to best reach your audience, the next thing you need to do is get organized. Creating a path for readers to follow through your information makes it more accessible and promotes greater understanding with less effort. Breaking information into sections and using headers and lists are great ways to organize and structure your writing. It’s also important to remember that when it comes to imparting understanding, clarity is always more important than brevity. If you take out context to make something shorter, you’re actually making it harder to understand. Context is the key to clarity.

Step 3: Choose your words carefully

Once you’ve organized your writing, you need to make sure the words you’re using to convey your ideas make sense to your audience. When you’re writing for a big group of people, use the most common word available - say money, not currency. Once you’ve decided on which word to use, keep using the same word across all of your content so readers can make connections across different sections of your text. It’s also best to avoid using jargon and acronyms. Readers who don’t immediately understand these terms will either skip them or get confused trying to decipher their meaning.

Step 4: Be concise

While making sure you have context is key, it’s also important to keep your writing efficient. A good way to do this is to focus on the structure of your writing, rather than the content. Keep sentences and paragraphs short. Avoid convoluted sentence structures, and eliminate filler text and meaningless words like really and just.  

Step 5: Keep it conversational

Writing in a way that mirrors how people talk is a great way to make your content more engaging and accessible. Using the present tense and using active voice are two easy ways to make your writing direct and easy to follow. Using contractions is another way to make your writing conversational. 

Step 6: Design for reading

Once you’ve got all of your content in place, making sure it’s formatted cleanly is another important step on the path to understanding. Use common fonts, avoid loud colors, and leave photos that are purely decorative off the page. However, using visuals like tables, charts, and models can be a great way to break up written content and make information easier to digest.

Step 7: Follow web standards

When you’re creating online content, making sure it’s optimized for the web is an important step in the writing process. If you’re using content that already exists in written form, adapt it before putting it online instead of copying it directly. Make sure you’re also following guidelines for web accessibility. 

Step 8: Test your assumptions

Sharing information with your customers is a dynamic process. People’s information needs change constantly, so it’s important to do regular testing and evaluations to make sure your content is still clear. Usability testing and paraphrase testing are two great ways to check your assumptions against the actual needs of your audience. 

Following plain language guidelines ensures that your information is clear, understood, and useful. Writing with plain language is a simple and cost-effective way to achieve the benchmarks of understanding they were designed to facilitate: helping people find what they need, making sure people understand what they find, and helping people use what they find in meaningful ways. Using these standards will help people better understand your information, and they’ll be delighted by how much easier it is to get what they need from the information.

*article & model by Emily Claflin