3.2 Plain language
While there was a time when many business documents were written in the third person to give them the impression of objectivity, this formal style was often passive and wordy. Today, it has given way to active, clear, concise writing, sometimes known as “plain English” (Bailey, 2008). Plain language style involves everyday words and expressions in a familiar group context and may include contractions. Why use a $100 word when a 25 cent one will do?
As business and industry increasingly trade across borders and languages, writing techniques that obscure meaning or impede understanding can cause serious problems. Efficient writing styles have become the norm.
No matter who your audience is, they will appreciate your ability to write using plain language. Here are five principles for writing in plain language:
Principle 1: Use active voice
To communicate professionally, you need to know when and how to use either active or passive voice. Although most contexts prefer the active voice, the passive voice may be the best choice in certain situations. Generally, though, passive voice tends to be awkward, vague, wordy, and a grammatical construct you should avoid in most cases.
Recognizing the active and passive voice
To use active voice, make the noun that performs the action the subject of the sentence and pair it directly with an action verb.
Read these two sentences:
Matt Damon left Harvard in the late 1980s to start his acting career.
Matt Damon’s acting career was started in the late 1980s when he left Harvard.
In the first sentence, left is an action verb that is paired with the subject, Matt Damon. If you ask yourself, “Who or what left?” the answer is Matt Damon. Neither of the other two nouns in the sentence—Harvard and career—“left” anything.
Now look at the second sentence. The action verb is started. If you ask yourself, “Who or what started something?” the answer, again, is Matt Damon. But in this sentence, the writer placed career—not Matt Damon—in the subject position. When the doer of the action is not the subject, the sentence is in passive voice. In passive voice constructions, the doer of the action usually follows the word by as the indirect object of a prepositional phrase, and the action verb is typically partnered with a version of the verb to be.
Writing in the active voice
Writing in active voice is easy once you understand the difference between active and passive voice. Make sure you always define who or what did what.
Using the passive voice
While using the active voice is preferred, sometimes passive voice is the best option. Consider the following acceptable uses of passive voice.
- When you do not know who or what is responsible for the action:
Example: Our front-door lock was picked.
Rationale: If you do not know who picked the lock on your front door, you cannot say who did it. You could say a thief broke in, but that would be an assumption; you could, theoretically, find out that the lock was picked by a family member who had forgotten to take a key.
- When you want to hide the person or thing responsible for the action, such as in a story:
Example: The basement was filled with a mysterious scraping sound.
Rationale: If you are writing a dramatic story, you might introduce a phenomenon without revealing the person or thing that caused it.
- When the person or thing that performed the action is not important:
Example: The park was flooded all week.
Rationale: Although you would obviously know that the rainwater flooded the park, saying so would not be important.
- When you do not want to place credit, responsibility, or blame:
Example: A mistake was made in the investigation that resulted in the wrong person being on trial.
Rationale: Even if you think you know who is responsible for a problem, you might not want to expose the person.
- When you want to maintain the impression of objectivity:
Example: It was noted that only first-graders chose to eat the fruit.
Rationale: Research reports in certain academic disciplines attempt to remove the researcher from the results, to avoid saying, for example, “I noted that only first graders….”
- When you want to avoid using a gendered construction, and pluralizing is not an option:
Example: If the password is forgotten by the user, a security question will be asked.
Rationale: This construction avoids the need for the cumbersome “his or her” (as in “the user forgets his or her password”).
Principle 2: Use common words instead of complex words
Inappropriate word choices will get in the way of your message. For this reason, use language that is accurate and appropriate for the writing situation. Omit jargon (technical words and phrases common to a specific profession or discipline) and slang (invented words and phrases specific to a certain group of people), unless your audience and purpose call for such language. Avoid using outdated words and phrases, such as “Dial the number.” Be straightforward in your writing rather than using euphemisms (gentler, but sometimes inaccurate, ways of saying something). Be clear about the level of formality each piece of writing needs, and adhere to that level.
Writing without jargon or slang
Jargon and slang both have their places. Using jargon is fine as long as you can safely assume your readers also know the jargon. For example, if you are a lawyer writing to others in the legal profession, using legal jargon is perfectly fine. On the other hand, if you are writing for people outside the legal profession, using legal jargon would most likely be confusing, and you should avoid it. Of course, lawyers must use legal jargon in papers they prepare for customers. However, those papers are designed to navigate within the legal system and may not be clear to readers outside of this demographic.
Principle 3: Use a positive tone when possible
Unless there is a specific reason not to, use positive language wherever you can. Positive language benefits your writing in two ways. First, it creates a positive tone, and your writing is more likely to be well-received. Second, it clarifies your meaning, as positive statements are more concise. Take a look at the following negatively worded sentences and then their positive counterparts, below.
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Examples: Negative: Your car will not be ready for collection until Friday. Negative: You did not complete the exam. Negative: Your holiday time is not approved until your manager clears it. |
Avoid using multiple negatives in one sentence, as this will make your sentence difficult to understand. When readers encounter more than one negative construct in a sentence, their brains have to do more cognitive work to decipher the meaning; multiple negatives can create convoluted sentences that bog the reader down.
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Examples: Negative: A decision will not be made unless all board members agree. Negative: The event cannot be scheduled without a venue. |
Principle 4: Write for your reader
When you write for your readers and speak to an audience, you have to consider who they are and what they need to know. When readers know that you are concerned with their needs, they are more likely to be receptive to your message, and will be more likely to take the action you are asking them to and focus on important details.
Your message will mean more to your reader if they get the impression that it was written directly to them.
Organize your document to meet your readers’ needs
When you write, ask yourself, “Why would someone read this message?” Often, it is because the reader needs a question answered. What do they need to know to prepare for the upcoming meeting, for example, or what new company policies do they need to abide by? Think about the questions your readers will ask and then organize your document to answer them.
Principle 5: Keep words and sentences short (conciseness)
It is easy to let your sentences become cluttered with words that do not add value to your message. Improve cluttered sentences by eliminating repetitive ideas, removing repeated words, and editing to eliminate unnecessary words.
Eliminating repetitive ideas
Unless you are providing definitions on purpose, stating one idea twice in a single sentence is redundant.
Removing repeated words
As a general rule, you should try not to repeat a word within a sentence. Sometimes you simply need to choose a different word, but often you can actually remove repeated words.
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Example: Original: The student who won the cooking contest is a very talented and ambitious student. Revision: The student who won the cooking contest is very talented and ambitious. |
Rewording to eliminate unnecessary words
If a sentence has words that are not necessary to carry the meaning, those words are unneeded and can be removed.
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Examples: Original: Andy has the ability to make the most fabulous twice-baked potatoes. Revision: Andy makes the most fabulous twice-baked potatoes. Original: For his part in the cooking class group project, Malik was responsible for making the mustard reduction sauce. Revision: Malik made the mustard reduction sauce for his cooking class group project. |
Avoid expletive pronouns (most of the time)
Many people create needlessly wordy sentences using expletive pronouns, which often take the form of “There is …” or “There are ….”
Pronouns (e.g., I, you, he, she, they, this, that, who, etc.) are words that we use to replace nouns (i.e., people, places, things), and there are many types of pronouns (e.g., personal, relative, demonstrative, etc.). However, expletive pronouns are different from other pronouns because unlike most pronouns, they do not stand for a person, thing, or place; they are called expletives because they have no “value.” Sometimes you will see expletive pronouns at the beginning of a sentence, sometimes at the end.
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Examples: There are a lot of reading assignments in this class. I can’t believe how many reading assignments there are! Note: These two examples are not necessarily bad examples of using expletive pronouns. They are included to help you first understand what expletive pronouns are so you can recognize them. |
The main reason you should generally avoid writing with expletive pronouns is that they often cause us to use more words in the rest of the sentence than we have to. Also, the empty words at the beginning tend to shift the more important subject matter toward the end of the sentence. The above sentences are not that bad, but at least they are simple enough to help you understand what expletive pronouns are. Here are some more examples of expletive pronouns, along with better alternatives.
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Examples Original: There are some people who love to cause trouble. Revision: Some people love to cause trouble. Original: There are some things that are just not worth waiting for. Revision: Some things are just not worth waiting for. Original: There is a person I know who can help you fix your computer. Revision: I know a person who can help you fix your computer. |
While not all instances of expletive pronouns are bad, writing sentences with expletives seems to be habit forming. It can lead to trouble when you are explaining more complex ideas, because you end up having to use additional strings of phrases to explain what you want your reader to understand. Wordy sentences, such as those with expletive pronouns, can tax the reader’s mind.
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Example Original: There is a button you need to press that is red and says STOP. Revision: You need to press the red STOP button. Or: Press the red STOP button. |
When you find yourself using expletives, always ask yourself if omitting and rewriting would give your reader a clearer, more direct, less wordy sentence. Can I communicate the same message using fewer words without taking away from the meaning I want to convey or the tone I want to create?
Choose specific wording
You will give clearer information if you write with specific rather than general words. Evoke senses of taste, smell, hearing, sight, and touch with your word choices. For example, you could say, “My shoe feels odd.” But this statement does not give a sense of why your shoe feels odd, since “odd” is an abstract word that does not suggest any physical characteristics. Or you could say, “My shoe feels wet.” This statement gives you a sense of how your shoe feels to the touch. It also gives a sense of how your shoe might look as well as how it might smell, painting a picture for your readers. See the table below to compare general and specific words.
Reference
Bailey, E. P. (2008). Plain English at work: A guide to business writing and speaking. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
Attributions
This chapter contains material taken from Part 1 “Foundations” in the Professional Communications OER by the Olds College OER Development Team (used under a CC-BY 4.0 International license) and Chapter 6.2 “Writing style” in Business Communication for Success (used under a CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 International license). You can download Professional Communications OER for free at http://www.procomoer.org/
