20 ms·

How to Write in Plain English

• DrBazza 6y ago
  English vs. business English. Pre-boarding is just boarding. Pre-booking is just booking. Pre-prefixing everything. Sigh. "Please revert" - you mean 'reply', not 'return to a former state'. "Ping me" - ugh. And my favourite.... "Learnings" - you mean lessons. "What drivings have you been on?" ... "What journeys have you been on?"
  • dijit 6y ago
    “Ping me” really threw me for a loop the first time I heard a non-tech say it in an obvious non-tech way. It literally has no other meaning outside of the ICMP echo utility; and the onomatopoeia of hitting glass. How did it enter the Business world?
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • invalidusernam3 6y ago
      Not that it answers your question, but here is a fairly interesting article on "ping me": https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/01/history-of-ping-a-warlike-word-used-by-business-people-trying-to-be-cute.html https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/01/history-of-ping-a-w...
    • xboxnolifes 6y ago
      I'm confused here. I thought what I thought of as "ping me" was obvious, but since you didn't state what I'm thinking of I guess not. Are we talking about slack/discord/teams pings here? If so the use is the onomatopoeia.
    • criddell 6y ago
      > It literally has no other meaning outside of the ICMP echo utility What about in the context of a sonar system on a submarine? My first encounter of the term was probably The Hunt for Red October.
    • jariel 6y ago
      Ping comes from submarine sonar - not the networking world. Everyone of a certain age will have seen a half dozen submarine WW2 or Cold War films so regular people do have context. And there's nothing wrong with it. 'Learnings' is an odd word but it actually makes sense because there are no perfect substitutes. 'Insights' isn't quite it.
      • quietbritishjim 6y ago
        A possible alternative to "learning" is "lesson". The problem with "lesson" is that it can have two meanings: (a) a formal lecture given by a qualified person to a class; (b) a fact that you learned from any person or even just a situation you were in. "Lesson" in the sense (b) is a direct substitute for "a learning", but I have to admit a few people might sometimes interpret it as (a) and be confused. But it depends on the context - if a project report has a "lessons learnt" heading I don't think any reader is going to expect that means meaning (a).
        • jariel 6y ago
          Yeah - 'lessons learned' is idiomatically more tantamount to something 'learned after having made an error'. I'll bet there are words in other languages that more perfectly capture the meaning of 'learnings' - and admittedly it's a really ugly colloquialism ... but I would accept it out of a resigned pragmatism.
      • pclmulqdq 6y ago
        I think the word 'learnings' comes to software companies from India. A company I worked at didn't use the word until an Indian senior manager came on, and then everyone started talking about 'learnings.' Conversely, I have heard it used in conversational English between people from India. There are plenty of other English words that work in context where you might use 'learning', like 'lesson', 'insight', or 'takeaway'. 'Learning' just encapsulates them all without nuance.
    • mrmonkeyman 6y ago
      Blackberry.
  • hestefisk 6y ago
    How about “decisioning”?
  • rvba 6y ago
    I thought that "pre-booking" means that you input all the available data related to a document into some computer system, but you do not finalize & accept the document yet -> so some of the data can still be changed in the future without consequence (for example: when some issue is explained with a supplier). Pre-booking is the initial step before a complete booking.
    • DrBazza 6y ago
      Agreed. Except when it isn't :) Ticket agencies use 'pre-booking' to book the first tiny tranche of tickets. And HR departments seem to love 'pre-authorization' to get... authorization for holidays, or purchasing, and so on.
      • lexicality 6y ago
        That's not entirely unreasonable, pre in this case trying to make explicit "ask me about this well ahead of time". eg you can make on the day bookings or call up HR to say you've got dave from forklifts incorporated on the phone and you need the company card immediately.
  • string 6y ago
    "Sense check" is one that infuriates me. Just say "check". Every place I've worked with managers that speak like this has invariably produced crap.
  • sharmi 6y ago
    Dunno, Ping me felt quite natural to me. It feels like a handy substitute for when there are multiple options for one person to contact another and person one does not care how he is contacted. As opposed to very formal communications that stick to email or mail. Ping me => email/call/slack/whatsapp/zulip/telegram/meet-in-person me
    • aembleton 6y ago
      Wouldn't `contact me` do?
      • smichel17 6y ago
        It lacks some connotation. "Remind me" comes closer. "Get my attention" probably captures it, but "ping me" is much shorter.
  • whack 6y ago
    The definition of "revert" has evolved, and even dictionaries are starting to acknowledge its alternative meaning as "reply". See: https://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/magazine/06FOB-onlanguage-t.html https://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/magazine/06FOB-onlanguage... I personally love "ping me". It's even shorter and more punchy, compared to "message me". Language evolves. Shakespeare would find our English today bewildering. Instead of complaining about it, I find it most helpful to keep up with the latest lingo, and focus instead on conveying my message most clearly.
    • DrBazza 6y ago
      Not sure why you've been downvoted. You're 100% correct. Language evolves. And old duffers like me, don't.
  • noname120 6y ago
    You might like this George Carlin stand-up show: https://youtu.be/6IC_It9DwDA?t=82 https://youtu.be/6IC_It9DwDA?t=82
    • DrBazza 6y ago
      Nice. Surprised I hadn't seen that.
  • zeveb 6y ago
    I don't mind 'ping me': that one has a clear reference to submarines and networks. What bothers me are 'ask' and 'lift' used as nouns. They add nothing to the language, and are just ugly. Maybe my father felt the same the first time he heard 'sweet' to mean 'cool.'
  • rswail 6y ago
    "We should socialize the learnings from this discussion." Is close to a real sentence pronounced upon us from a management type during one of their endless Zoom meetings. Someone sent in a semi-private chat shared by some of us, "They meant, we should share what we've learned."
    • rpastuszak 6y ago
      > "We should socialize the learnings from this discussion." I feel like we worked for the same company. Last time I heard this exact phrase I was participating in a meeting where one of the agenda points was feedback from a meeting about meetings. Result: we scheduled another meeting. Important question: did we deliver value?
  • jgwil2 6y ago
    "Ask" as a noun - "What is the ask?" "Build out" instead of just build. "Actionable" - although it is a real word, it is a legal term, not a synonym of practical.
• gorgoiler 6y ago
  Writing clearly is like playing Tetris. Sentences should be presented with clauses that drop down and slot together efficiently. At the earliest available opportunity you drop in a block that completes the line and points are won/made. This can also make for rather dull writing and I appreciate the irony in this paragraph: > However, at first you may still find yourself writing the odd long sentence, especially when trying to explain a complicated point. But most long sentences can be broken up in some way. Here we see the Tetris player drop a sequence of blocks leaving a 3x1 gap down the left edge. Where are they going with this? More blocks stack up on the middle and right, there are “bubbles” in the pile that are covered by squares and there’s still that annoying gap on the left holding them back from clearing. Time passes. The screen is now getting dangerously full. Then they drop in a pair of 4x1 blocks that completes rows 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6. The bubbles on rows 4 and 7 become exposed making a T shaped hole. The next block to fall is a T shape. The screen clears, the sentence’s cognitive buffer is flushed, and we move on to the next point.
  • Erlich_Bachman 6y ago
    > the sentence’s cognitive buffer is flushed Somehow, this single expression made me finally (after reading beginning of it) understand your post better. Before that expression had hit my apprehension, the post read like "what is he on about?". Perhaps needless to point out, but this is quite a beautiful thing you've done there: the expression itself works as the very thing it describes, in the context of your post. Within the post, that expression is the T-shaped block, - the thing that clears the buffer and makes all the collected blocks all make sense together.
  • Cyphase 6y ago
    I enjoyed reading the second half in a nature documentary narrator's voice. Or a tennis announcer maybe.
  • bambambazooka 6y ago
    This is such a beautiful explanation. Comments like this make me come back to HN again and again.
  • nicbou 6y ago
• robin_reala 6y ago
  This article explains how, but it doesn’t explain why: you should do this because it’s an accessibility issue. NHS Digital came up with a good example of this problem: https://digital.nhs.uk/blog/transformation-blog/2019/pee-and-poo-and-the-language-of-health https://digital.nhs.uk/blog/transformation-blog/2019/pee-and...
  • gherkinnn 6y ago
    Brilliant article. gov.uk (and their adjacents) do amazing work.
  • dan-robertson 6y ago
    Saying the reason is “accessibility” suggests that it only helps people with poor literacy. There are two things to note: 1. Most people writing content will assume that their readers are like themselves or their social circle and will therefore have good literacy skills. However the actual proportion of people with poor (or even just not high) literacy skills is much higher than you might estimate from your social circle. 2. Improving clarity for people with poor literacy will also improve readability for people with good literacy.
    • learnstats2 6y ago
      If you read that "accessibility" is only helpful to specific groups, then you haven't understood accessibility. (I'm not sure if I'm agreeing with you here)
    • nicbou 6y ago
      You must also consider people who are not native speakers. I'm sometimes appalled by the complexity of the letters I get in Germany, especially when they are related to immigration.
      • rimliu 6y ago
        So, the solution is to dumb everything down to the least common denominator?
• bertman 6y ago
  The campaign founder's biography[1] sounds interesting: Born in 1938, Chrissie largely missed out on formal education and could not read until she was in her mid‑teens. And later: In 1994 Chrissie received an OBE and in 1995 she was awarded an honorary MA by Manchester University. Two years later, she received an honorary doctorate from the Open University. And in 1999 she officially joined the 'establishment' when she was listed in Who's Who. [1] http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/about-us/history/chrissie-maher-obe.html http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/about-us/history/chrissie-mahe...
• icu 6y ago
  Plain English has been a 'super power' for my report writing ever since it was drummed into me by a former CEO and MD at a finance and economic consultancy I worked at after University. "Style toward Clarity and Grace" by Joseph M. Williams is, imho, the most thorough, yet comprehensible, guide to how to write in Plain English. It goes beyond short 'do this, don't do that' guides by explaining why, and how, English can be unclear with exercises to help transform your writing. I can't stress enough that the ability to take both simple ideas, and complex ideas, and write both in a clear and compelling way that inspires action, will pay dividends over any career.
  • pinky07 6y ago
    I wrote a memento / summary of the book, for anyone interested to discover it at a glance: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1F8_p3bkzugTvkBd1Ja6bHLR2v_XXRWqtcq7jF2gu0EM/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/document/d/1F8_p3bkzugTvkBd1Ja6bHLR2...
    • icu 6y ago
      Thank you for the link, this is a great resource you've put together! I'll be sure to share with some of my colleagues.
• powersnail 6y ago
  Structure is the biggest factor of readability. We’ve seen many English style guides, but they are mostly on a sentence and vocabulary level. A run-on sentence can still be read, just more slowly. An unfamiliar word can be tackled with a dictionary. But if the text isn’t well-organized on the larger scale, there is no hope.
• lxe 6y ago
  Don't follow the 'active verbs' rule too much. There's a limit to it, especially when writing technical documents. If it sounds unnatural, or when you have an implied subject that's an important part of the thing you're trying to convey, just use passive voice.
  • compressedgas 6y ago
    Also Fear and Loathing of the English Passive http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/passive_loathing.pdf http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/passive_loathing.pdf
  • praptak 6y ago
    TFA does mention some good uses of passive voice. If I were to add one more example it would be where the object is actually more important than the subject. "The handle then gets closed by one of the cleanup mechanisms" is probably okay if you are telling the story of the handle.
  • naringas 6y ago
    indeed not. There's a youtube video with Steven Pinker explaining how passive verbs often improve the flow of writing thus increasing legibility https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OV5J6BfToSw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OV5J6BfToSw
• Brajeshwar 6y ago
  Personally, I'm happy with few tools that helps me write simpler (and hopefully better) English in my everyday usage. ## Long-Form When I'm writing a long-form prose/essay, I start writing in Hemingway[1]. Edits and changes are done there to cater to my target audience. I'd then pick up the draft from there and go through Grammarly[2] as the final passage. ## Quick, Short Writings For everyday use, I use iA / Writer[3]. I turn on all the Style Check filters to spot superfluous adjectives, weak verbs, and unwanted repetitions. I then, let it go through Grammarly (either with the App, or via browser Input fields). This has helped me a lot. Growing up in a region with too many dialects per area, we used English as the one medium to communicate and educate, so I have the affinity to write more phrase-y, English-y. For quite a while, I have wanted to simply and write more clearer, simpler, and effective. These three tools have helped me a lot. I have used Grammarly for almost a year, it says my vocabulary uses more unique words than 94% of Grammarly users. I'm not particularly proud of that. I want to simplify. 1. http://www.hemingwayapp.com http://www.hemingwayapp.com 2. https://grammarly.com https://grammarly.com 3. https://ia.net/writer https://ia.net/writer
• brianmcc 6y ago
  This Orwell essay stuck with me many years ago, well worth a read: https://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit https://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_poli...
  • uniqueid 6y ago
    It's only the best English essay of its kind — or maybe of any kind!
    • brianmcc 6y ago
      It could well be! Reading it properly again for the first time in literally around 30 years I'm astonished at how much I've taken its messages to heart in my 20+ year career. To this day I have a downright visceral reaction against "pretentious diction", and as a fairly confident written communicator I find overly "clever" writing is to be mistrusted, not praised. There's a real Emperor's New Clothes thing going on with a lot of business writing.
    • criddell 6y ago
      Even though I don't particularly like Orwell's writing, I read the essay and it's good but parts haven't aged well. For example, in the pretentious diction section he lists words like expedite, predict, extraneous, and clandestine as unnecessary words used by bad writers. I wonder if he were still around today, would he stand by that list?
• dreen 6y ago
  Heres a great list from GOV.UK of the kind of words to avoid when using Plain English: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/style-guide/a-to-z-of-gov-uk-style#words-to-avoid https://www.gov.uk/guidance/style-guide/a-to-z-of-gov-uk-sty...
  • strogonoff 6y ago
    Love it. Check out “Writing for GOV.UK”[0] for more guidance. Among interesting things to note that they strongly discourage FAQs (“if you write content by starting with user needs, you will not need to use FAQs … they are usually not frequently asked questions by the public, but important information dumped by the content editor”). The concept of FAQ has long been a pet peeve of mine, although I do believe the “question and answer” format has some merit. [0] https://www.gov.uk/guidance/content-design/writing-for-gov-uk https://www.gov.uk/guidance/content-design/writing-for-gov-u...
    • petepete 6y ago
      Perfectly-timed!
      • strogonoff 6y ago
        Indeed!
    • BurningFrog 6y ago
      A useful FAQ list must consist of questions that are actually often asked. They represent discovered problems in the text the author didn't foresee.
      • strogonoff 6y ago
        > They represent discovered problems in the text the author didn't foresee. Indeed. If certain questions are asked frequently, likely the information is not presented with audience’s actual needs in mind. Content should be updated, possibly rewritten. Putting up a FAQ shows content editor washing their hands of that responsibility. I also find it a little rude, like “Welcome to the group of people who, despite our best efforts, didn’t manage to understand what we wrote! Here are some questions you lot keep asking…” (Of course, usually it’s not that, but rather a half-hearted attempt to be helpful and/or reduce the amount of people getting in touch with questions.)
• jwilk 6y ago
  "a mistake was made" as a good use of passive? Is that a joke?
  • uniqueid 6y ago
    I had the same reaction. That section was painful. On the other hand, sometimes people get away with it, so the advice is right in one sense, even if it's wrong in another.
  • 8K832d7tNmiQ 6y ago
    As a way to blurring whom to blame, yes it works fine.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• paulpauper 6y ago
  Longer sentences are better and more efficient for conveying content when used appropriately. Short sentences mean you have to use too many conjunctions and other filler. Use whatever style you think will be the most effective for readers.
  • fauigerzigerk 6y ago
    I think there are two kinds of long sentences. One just keeps adding detail. It's essentially a list. Breaking it up into multiple sentences would require a lot of unnecessary conjunctions as you say. The other kind of long sentence forces you to keep a lot in your head until the meaning is finally resolved at the very end. That's the kind of sentence that should be broken up because it creates unnecessary mental burden.
    • rimliu 6y ago
      It may also create necessary mental burden. I think too much has been considered "unnecessary mental burden" recently, including education.
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
• marknadal 6y ago
  Or you could just use a writing app that yells at you for stuff like this. Obligatory XKCD... + https://xkcd.com/simplewriter/ https://xkcd.com/simplewriter/ + http://www.hemingwayapp.com/ http://www.hemingwayapp.com/
• oliver101 6y ago
  > Most of the UK's biggest insurance companies produce policies that explain everything fully in plain English. Is this an argument in favour of plain English? Insurance policy documents are incredibly hard to understand and full of bloat. They are a near-perfect example of how not to write an accessible, informative, and useful document for the intended audience.
  • JDEW 6y ago
    Two paragraphs down: > Sadly, thanks to the bureaucrats of public service industries, local councils, banks, building societies, _insurance companies_ and government departments, we have learnt to accept an official style of writing that is inefficient and often unfriendly. > But in the last few years, many of these offenders have started to put things right, either rewriting their documents clearly or training their staff in the art of plain English, or both. So, it’s a work in progress. I agree that the order is confusing though.
    • oliver101 6y ago
      I saw that but couldn't square it with the earlier sentence. In my previous role we interviewed tens of small business owners and nobody knew what was in their docs. I hope insurance companies will be as bold to go beyond simplifying language but also simplifying terms (e.g. Lemonade's https://www.lemonade.com/policy-two https://www.lemonade.com/policy-two)
  • jfax 6y ago
    In the UK, the Plain English Campaign awards certifications to numerous insurance companies, among other businesses and organisations, for writing their policies in Plain English. The point they are making is that plain English belongs is present in domains as hefty and complex as insurance.
• nicbou 6y ago
  I write technical guides for people who are not native speakers. Using simple vocabulary is easy, but using simple grammar is not. Here's a recent article I wrote. It should give you an idea of what I mean: https://allaboutberlin.com/guides/car-insurance-germany https://allaboutberlin.com/guides/car-insurance-germany There are a few things I would add to this: --- ▶ Your readers are here for information, not entertainment. Get to the point. ▶ If a paragraph answers a question, the first sentence should be the tl;dr. Highlight it if necessary. [1] ▶ Use formatting to make skimming easier. Users don't read documents from start to finish. They are looking for specific answers. [2] I spent a lot of time tweaking my website to be more readable. ▶ Use can (optional), should (recommended) and must (mandatory) consistently. "It's ill-advised to do this, because ..." >>> "You should not do this, because ...". ▶ Avoid run-on sentences. Generally, that means maximum one comma per sentence. ▶ Start with the "if" part of the sentence: "If you are over 60, you are not eligible". It lets people skip sentences that don't concern them. ▶ Avoid expressions and idioms as much as possible. "If you're feeling under the weather, stay home" >>> "If you don't feel well, stay home". ▶ Avoid ambiguity between sentences: "The cat sits in the house. It is old." >>> "The old cat sits in the house". ▶ Use commas generously. It makes sentences easier to digest. I'm a big fan of the Oxford comma. ▶ Use Hemingway [3] to catch some of those mistakes --- In other words, DON'T BE CLEVER. It feels a lot like writing software that will be maintained by novice programmers. Simple language is really important, especially if you deal with the general population. Some people don't read well. Some people don't speak English well. Some topics are confusing enough on their own. [1] https://allaboutberlin.com/guides/anmeldung-in-english-berlin#can-i-do-my-anmeldung-at-a-hotel-or-airBnB https://allaboutberlin.com/guides/anmeldung-in-english-berli... [2] https://allaboutberlin.com/guides/how-to-get-a-german-freelance-visa https://allaboutberlin.com/guides/how-to-get-a-german-freela... [3] http://www.hemingwayapp.com/ http://www.hemingwayapp.com/
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• ralphstodomingo 6y ago
  I'm curious. Is there a specific reason why the trend for our use of the English language went towards this direction, when in the past, a lot of the historical material I read seemed intentionally verbose? Sure, it's all for ensuring we are understood better among ourselves, but I wonder if writing this way makes us cognitively simpler.
  • frabert 6y ago
    Maybe in the past, written material was consumed by the elite, educated fraction of the population, and this was a way to "show off" their knowledge. Today, reading is accessible to a much broader percentage of people who may not all be as educated.
    • Mediterraneo10 6y ago
      > written material was consumed by the elite, educated fraction of the population, and this was a way to "show off" their knowledge One notes that even in letters sent home from American and Western European wars in the 19th century, the common soldiers who wrote those letters often used much more elaborate sentence structures than today, even though they were from the peasantry and had not received more than a rudimentary schooling.
      • wombatmobile 6y ago
        Uneducated peasant soldiers wrote that way too, in 19th century war letters from America and Western Europe.
  • laputan_machine 6y ago
    If the aim is to get a point across, why use complicated words and sentences, when simple ones might be better understood? If an idea can be expressed in the same way with "Plain English", how would this make people 'congnitively simpler'?
    • ralphstodomingo 6y ago
• azangru 6y ago
  > Sadly, thanks to the bureaucrats of public service industries, local councils, banks, building societies, insurance companies and government departments, we have learnt to accept an official style of writing that is inefficient and often unfriendly. Interesting. I thought the use of "thanks to" as a preposition indicating a causal relationship with negative consequences was generally discouraged, because, by its very nature, it's a metaphor. But I can't find any style guide that would support this.
• secondcoming 6y ago
  The EU has ended up inventing its own form of English [0] "Over the years, the European institutions have developed a vocabulary that differs from that of any recognised form of English. It includes words that do not exist or are relatively unknown to native English speakers outside the EU institutions and often even to standard spellcheckers/grammar checkers (‘planification’, ‘to precise’ or ‘telematics’ for example) and words that are used with a meaning, often derived from other languages, that is not usually found in English dictionaries (‘coherent’ being a case in point). Some words are used with more or less the correct meaning, but in contexts where they would not be used by native speakers (‘homogenise’, for example)." [0] https://www.eca.europa.eu/Other%20publications/EN_TERMINOLOGY_PUBLICATION/EN_TERMINOLOGY_PUBLICATION.pdf https://www.eca.europa.eu/Other%20publications/EN_TERMINOLOG...
• dragonwriter 6y ago
  > * A list that is a continuous sentence with several listed points picked out at the beginning, middle or end. > * A list of separate points with an introductory statement (like this list). > In the list above, each point is a complete sentence Er, no, each of those is a (quite long, given the target sentence size the piece argues for) freestanding noun phrase, not a complete sentence.
• fooblat 6y ago
  This is especially important when working at an international company with many non-native English speakers. One of the software engineers (an English major) I worked with at a previous gig could not get his head around the idea of writing in plan English. He would write English at such an elaborate level that when he announced his resignation to the company via email, most people did not understand from that email that he was resigning!
• rjmunro 6y ago
  I've heard complaints that while it calls itself "campaign", implying it's a not-for-profit grass roots movement, it is actually a private for-profit company selling publications along with commercial editing and training services. https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/02564513 https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/02564513
• vonwoodson 6y ago
  The US government actually put this idea into law 10 years ago: https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/PLAW-111publ274 https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/PLAW-111publ274 More interesting link here: https://plainlanguage.gov https://plainlanguage.gov
• k__ 6y ago
  Reminds me of Wikipedia's "simple English" approach. I think the difference is, that simple or basic English only uses the 1000 most common words.
  • throwanem 6y ago
    You might not know it, but "thousand" is not one of the ten hundred most usual English words! https://github.com/aaron-em/ten-hundred-mode.el https://github.com/aaron-em/ten-hundred-mode.el
    • rimliu 6y ago
      I think this is English specific and could do more harm than good for someone with a different background. E.g. in my language counting anything > 1000 in hundreds would sound very weird.
      • throwanem 6y ago
        "Ten hundred", "twenty hundred", etc. sound very weird in English, too, despite "eleven hundred", "twelve hundred", etc. being commonplace in at least the American dialect. That said, "ten hundred" is hardly the weirdest thing about English prose written in ten-hundred-mode...
• GuB-42 6y ago
  Something not written there: don't use acronyms Acronyms are a plague, especially in technical documents. These documents may include a glossary, which it better than nothing, but if an acronym is only used once or twice in a document, why not use the full name instead? Here is a couple of anecdotes: - I once overheard a heated argument between a project manager and some over guy who criticized his work. Turned out, they weren't talking about the same project at all, only their acronyms where the same. - In a report that explained why a particular proposal was selected over its competitors, one of the positive points was that their proposal was clearly written, understandable, and didn't contain any acronym.
  • pilsetnieks 6y ago
    It does say to "Use everyday English whenever possible. Avoid jargon and legalistic words, and always explain any technical terms you have to use."
  • jaclaz 6y ago
    In case of redundancy (useful reference) : http://www.acronympolice.org/ http://www.acronympolice.org/ http://www.acronympolice.org/?page_id=90 http://www.acronympolice.org/?page_id=90
• samthecoy 6y ago
  If anyone is interested, there is an excellent "plain style" guide which is recommend for much of the British Civil Service. It's called "Plain Words", and is by Sir Ernest Gowers. It's received an updated version in recent years.
• bambax 6y ago
  I frequently receive letters from various European administrations, France, Germany, Poland, the UK. Letters from HMRC are amazing. The first time it is really shocking, but after a while it's almost a pleasure to be asked to send money to the Queen! But I think one of the reason bureaucracies prefer writing jargon and long winded sentences is to protect their influence and necessity. If you write in plain English (or French), then there's little room for interpretation. Good for the reader, but not for the sender. Ambiguity is power.
  • nicbou 6y ago
    The ones from German bureaucrats are simply horrible.
• wombatmobile 6y ago
  When the purpose of written communication is to direct, instruct or inform, Plain English works wonders. Other times, like when people write to demonstrate nuanced expertise, or to connect with a specific audience, or to place themselves apart from a specific audience, or to entertain, delight, uplift, transcend, prod, annoy, or console, Plain English can be too plain.
• ximm 6y ago
  This might be a good spot to point out that there is actually a BCP 47 language tag for this: en-simple. I would love to see more adoption. More info: https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/ietf-languages/yVTGZS-6IfBnnk8hmz1n36jVpgM https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/ietf-languages/yVTGZS-...
• pbronez 6y ago
  Another good resource is https://plainlanguage.gov/ https://plainlanguage.gov/ I frequently refer writers to specific sections of this site when I edit their technical and marketing documents.
• aclimatt 6y ago
  I'd guess (almost) everyone wishes everyone else wrote in plain language. But there's potentially a more fundamental reason people don't. bambax in another comment pointed out the power of ambiguity, and that's one of the reasons especially in legal / government, but there's another. Language, specifically jargon, is an expression of culture. It's an expression of power, education, experience, or lack thereof. It's a quick way to gauge if someone is "like you" or not. If they have the same experience, and especially in professional settings, a quick (yet often incorrect) measure of competence. Take everyone's favorite, "Business English": You don't try again, you iterate. You don't take another call, you jump or hop to another call. You sync, and you align. Against the article's recommendation, you nominalize all day, by "bringing projects to completion" and "moving forward with the engagement". Jargon and style, while often utter bullshit, is a way of measuring people quickly. I once had someone ask me, "would you say you practice disruptive innovation methodology?" My answer to that question was a quick way to learn that unlike them, I did not have an MBA. Complexity is often synonymous with education. > Jargon is a type of language that is only understood by a particular group of people. You can use jargon when writing to people who will understand the terms and phrases. It can be a useful form of shorthand. But try to avoid using specialist jargon on the general public. Unless your goal is to identify if someone is part of said particular group. And therefore in the vast majority of business and technical cases, Plain English -- at least jargon and nominalization -- unfortunately may close more doors than it opens.
  • drdeadringer 6y ago
    > "Business English" I'm not sure why it took me until now to name that style of speaking. Over 10 years ago I was in a room where someone said "let us dialogue about this offline" to actually mean "shut up, let's continue". I am often reminded of the phrase "It does not require many words to speak the truth", but here we are with "Business English".
  • nicbou 6y ago
    There is a place and a time for culture. Your electric bill is not one of them. I disagree with your last paragraph. Speaking clearly and decisively is a good thing, and people will usually appreciate it. People become famous for speaking clearly. I remember some general made the rounds for his plain, no-nonsense COVID-19 address. I wish I could find it again. I can only think of this scene right now. https://youtu.be/Hhy7JUinlu0 https://youtu.be/Hhy7JUinlu0
• srg0 6y ago
  How to write rich text English: 1) The writer should make a conscious effort to keep his or her sentences as long as possible; just one word: the flow; some shorter sentences can be juxtaposed, periods replaced with comas or semicolons; the abundance of adjectives and adjective phrases never hurt -- 2) The passive voice has to be chosen whenever possible; safer, less offensive, less responsible language is the enabler 3) Possessive determiners are to be preferred over personal pronouns, the passive voice is based on their liberal use 4) Thesaurus is considered by some to be essential for richer and more subtle communication, word substitutions refine the ideas being conveyed to the reader -- -- the reader should be never explicitly solicited to do anything -- he or she should be free-willed into doing 6) Consideration of these dos and donts will likely unleash also the power of nominalization; nominalized verbs put action first *) Bullet lists are the standard punctuation; /s
• maps7 6y ago
  I see no proof that 'active' is better than 'passive'. Does anyone have any more information on this?
  • rimliu 6y ago
    What would be considere a proof in linquistics?
    • maps7 6y ago
      A study on the impact of both methods? I don't understand how it can be claimed 'active' is better than 'passive'?
• amadeuspagel 6y ago
  > Use lists where appropriate This is so important. How many essays are basically a list of unrelated arguments, but not presented as a list? Things lists make easier: - Refer to specific points. - Skip a point you already understand. Even as I write this, I had to remind myself to express it as a list, rather then a long-winded sentence, which I probably wouldn't have if I weren't writing specifically to advocate lists. It's so deeply ingrained by years of english classes to hide the structure of the text with clauses such as "furthermore". I even remember being supposed to learn a list of such clauses.
• paulnechifor 6y ago
  > whilst (while) I'm not a native English speaker, but I find it funny how Americans often consider English spellings wrong. I wonder if American Hispanics do the same for Spaniards: > Ahem, it's pronounced "ustedes", not "vosotros". That's not a word.
  • Mediterraneo10 6y ago
    > Ahem, it's pronounced "ustedes", not "vosotros". That's not a word. As someone who learned Spanish in Spain, I have occasionally been "corrected" by South Americans when using vosotros. Of course, no one denies that vosotros is a word, but I have been told something along the lines of "There are X Spanish-speaking countries in the world, and only one says vosotros, so please, stop doing that and talk like us instead." South Americans with this hangup are a small minority, of course, but they definitely exist.
  • cprecioso 6y ago
    Spanish spellings are quite standardized around the world, the “language academies” of each country collaborate together. Moreover Spanish writing is phonetic so there’s only really one way to pronounce a written word. On the other hand, in Spain we’re famous for “cecear”, that is to pronounce “c” as the z in zombie; while in the rest of Latin America the pronounce it more like an s.
    • kwhitefoot 6y ago
      > Spanish writing is phonetic so there’s only really one way to pronounce a written word. So there are no accents or dialects in Spain?
      • cprecioso 6y ago
        Of course there are. What I mean is that each letter is only pronounced one way. For example, in English the "o" in "woman" and "women" sounds different, with exactly the same syllabic structure. However in Spanish, every time you write the "o" it is pronounced the same as every other "o". In some accents/dialects some letters will have slightly different pronunciations or intonations (e.g. c turns into s, or s at the end of a word will turn silent), but within that accent, most sounds will remain stably linked to a letter. EDIT: Of course, I am not a linguist and I'm sure every word of my example can be debunked a million ways; but this is the experience of the language for a native Spain Spanish speaker.
• kwhitefoot 6y ago
  > You may not photocopy any guide or pass on electronic copies without our permission. Why do people bother making unenforceable restrictions?
  • russfink 6y ago
    Bump. Yes, why the ominous copyright? It's plain silly.
    • NKosmatos 6y ago
      I think the best (worst?) copyright notice is the following from Ken Rockwell[0]: "As this page is copyrighted and formally registered, it is unlawful to make copies, especially in the form of printouts for personal use. If you wish to make a printout for personal use, you are granted one-time permission only if you PayPal me $5.00 per printout or part thereof. Thank you!" [0] https://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/fart.htm https://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/fart.htm
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
• tjpnz 6y ago
  As someone working with software engineers for which English is not a first language I cannot emphasise the importance of this enough. I've spent the last year or so consciously working on my writing and it's really paid off - especially given the current situation. Never assume anything about your audience's understanding. Break everything down into short, concise sentences. If you're attempting to get across a non-trivial concept avoid the temptation to use big words - even if you end up having to write more. When you're done take another pass and see if you can simplify things further.
• motohagiography 6y ago
  As someone who finds passive language patronizing and insulting, this is a relief to read.
  • zeckalpha 6y ago
    “this is a relief to read” -> “reading this relieved me” Perhaps passive voice isn’t as annoying to you as you claim. There is a difference between writing passively and using passive voice.
    • motohagiography 6y ago
      Hah, indeed. I'd say the passive voice is a common a tool for patronizing people, and too much tolerance for it is bad for an organization.
      • ativzzz 6y ago
        > and too much tolerance for it is bad for an organization Passive again! "An organization tolerating it too much is bad" is active :)
        • motohagiography 6y ago
          The intended more-active would be "A leader who tolerates too much of it harms their organization," so it doesn't always transpose.
• aazaa 6y ago
  The article doesn't mention the way that word placement changes the meaning of sentences. From a video I recently saw but can't recall, consider these sentences: - Although John is a nice guy, he beats his dog. - Although John beats his dog, he's a nice guy. - John is a nice guy, but he beats his dog. - John beats his dog, but he's a nice guy. These are all plain English sentences, but will be interpreted quite differently. For the moment, try to set aside the moral judgement on dog beating and consider what the author's opinion of John is in each case. For example, readers tend to latch onto the last part of a sentence. So putting the nice guy part last tends to support John. Whereas putting the dog beating last tends to undermine John. Same facts, almost the same words, but different messages.
  • nicbou 6y ago
    > For example, readers tend to latch onto the last part of a sentence. Everything before "but" is often bullshit. "I'm not racist, but". "No offense, but".
    • alexpetralia 6y ago
      Is it? It seems like a qualified statement which emphasizes the unequal weights of two opposing views. How about: "There are multiple ways to solve this problem, but this is best one." Isn't that better than: "This is how we should solve it"? I see no problem with qualifying an assertion with a lesser weight.
    • mynegation 6y ago
      Maybe not the best example, as it is hard to imagine someone being nice and beating the dog, but the point still stands if you pick up something less extreme: "John is a good friend but forgets my birthday every year".
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      • brianmcc 6y ago
        Great real world example. IMO it's a really powerful "language pattern". Another example: "Boris Johnson is a woefully inadequate Prime Minister but he was kind of funny 20 years ago on Have I Got News For You". It's almost like weighing Negative Fact #1 against Positive Fact #2 and suggesting to the audience that the scales are now more or less level so let's move on. Obviously the 2 facts are a long way from being really "equal", and how one applies the offset (minor bad vs major good, major bad vs minor good, etc) should be influenced by what one is trying to achieve.
• SagelyGuru 6y ago
  Am I the only one who finds The List of Words to Avoid rather depressing? I mean I get what they are trying to do: minimise the number of letters. Yet, language is also about variety and not being really, really dull. Perhaps also about not treating your readers like idiots? Most of those slightly longer words look like perfectly legitimate alternatives in that regard.
  • morley 6y ago
    Your point is addressed earlier in the article: It's not about banning new words, killing off long words or promoting completely perfect grammar. Nor is it about letting grammar slip. A good complement to this article is Orwell's "Politics and the English Language," which talks about how people might use long, complex words (like those in the Words to Avoid list) to seem more important. That's the other side of the "variety" coin. The reality is that a skilled writer can walk that fine line, but most people are better off keeping their word choice simple and direct.
    • SagelyGuru 6y ago
      "It is not bout killing off long words" rings rather hollow when it is followed by a list of longer words to replace with shorter ones. It is not the fault of the innocent words that someone may have misused them to feel important. But let us go deeper and ask: how did importance become associated with longer words? Was it perhaps because important and educated people used them, since they carried more precise and specific meanings?
  • shpongled 6y ago
    I agree. The beauty of reading and writing English is the massive array of words we have that can mean the same thing. It's also one of the reasons I like reading the Economist for my news, they typically write with a diction that is above 6th grade level.
  • nicbou 6y ago
    It depends on what you need to achieve. Les Cowboys Fringants display the full colours of Canadian french in their songs, but they're creating art. The government needs to tell people of all backgrounds that they must do something or face serious consequences. They are not creating art, but communicating important information to busy, confused people.
• antipaul 6y ago
  How in the world am I to do this, when no manager nor leader in my org leads by example?
  • garethrowlands 6y ago
    Do this in the areas you control. If that's just your own output, that's OK. Maybe later you can expand it.
    • antipaul 6y ago
      Indeed, good suggestion. The tension is with standing out, culturally and otherwise. If what you do is outside the norm, you are “different” and “difficult to work with”. But yea, doing the right thing is more important!
• levosmetalo 6y ago
  Would like to see a similar suggestion for writing in plain German.
• docent8 6y ago
  This guide makes excellent points. I also recommend this book: https://www.amazon.com/Style-Clarity-Chicago-Writing-Publishing/dp/0226899152 https://www.amazon.com/Style-Clarity-Chicago-Writing-Publish... He says that to achieve clarity, imagine the subject of each sentence as the character of a scene, and the verb as its action. Make sure you hit both character and action within the first 6-10 words of your sentence. Begin each sentence with information that the reader is familiar with, and end it with the new information you want to introduce. That will get you a long way toward creating understanding (and feeling) in the reader.
• greentimer 6y ago
  "Most experts would agree that clear writing should have an average sentence length of 15 to 20 words." This quote is so preposterous it almost made me want to stop reading the article. Different types of writing should have different sentence lengths. I'm quite sure the sentence length for a math textbook and a Clorox ad should be different. There's a reason it's not common practice to measure one's average sentence lengths. Like most material written on language, this article says almost nothing and is basically filler. "Don't be afraid to give instructions". "Use lists where appropriate". Well of course we know we can give instructions! I recently read a famous book called "How to Read a Book" that in a similar vein struggled to find anything non-obvious to say about language. It just comes so naturally to people that it's difficult to comment on. This article is coming from an organization called the Plain English Campaign that's been around since 1979. I wonder what they can have claimed to have accomplished since then. This article reminded me of arguments I always read in philosophy about tough subjects like radical skepticism where the authors fail to make any points beyond the obvious. Sure, certain knowledge is impossible for humans to attain, but can you say anything else!?
  • bonoboTP 6y ago
    The page has many useful tips on how to avoid writing in a bureaucratic, distant, formal, long-winded style. I see lots of text daily that fit the antipatterns mentioned in the article. Sometimes the writer doesn't know better. Sometimes they internalized some prescriptive hard and fast rules that are supposedly mandatory for pro writing (no split infinitive! No sentence started wit "so"!). But more often, I think, obscure and pretentious writing is a feature for the writer. It creates distance, formality, passive aggressively signals "leave me alone" and "you are a small cog in a powerful machine", "we have authority over you", it allows for better plausible deniability, and CYA. Or said in a different way from the writers point of view: if I wrote this too plainly, more people will feel compelled to write to me as if I was their buddy and will guide them through everything. By writing formally, I put up a wall and make my life easier. People will actually have to take time to decipher it all, so its also a natural filter for attentive readers.
  • C4stor 6y ago
    As a non-native english writer, I found the article quite good. It reminds good practices for clear communication, which I wish everyone applied in my org. Notably around me, people excessively use passive forms. So, you weren't interested, but it doesn't mean it interests noone.
• polimind 6y ago
  "It's faster to write." Totally disagree with this point. Orwell explains how the exact opposite is true in his "Politics and the English Language." Vague writing requires only vague thought. Clear writing requires clear thought (as well as editing), and clear thought takes effort. As a writer, you might have to spend more time actually typing unclear and convoluted garbage, but you can basically turn off your brain and just start vomiting words onto the page. To do that asks much less of you than writing clearly does. (Classic example is the Pascal quote: "I apologize for the length of my letter. I didn't have time to write a shorter one.")
• SkyMarshal 6y ago
  Oblig Scott Adams reference, for anyone who hasn’t seen it yet: https://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/06/the_day_you_bec.html https://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/06/the...
• greenie_beans 6y ago
  it's very hard to write well. one of the best pieces of writing advice i ever heard: your sentences should make sense enough to be taken out of a paragraph and put on a new line for each sentence. if your sentences make sense on a line-by-line basis, then your writing is more understandable.
• matthewfelgate 6y ago
  That's actually really useful.
• jetrink 6y ago
  At the start of my career, I had some bad tendencies in both writing and programming. I delighted in being clever. I was eager to demonstrate my knowledge and ability. I was more concerned with having fun while writing than serving the reader. It has been educational to be forced to become a reader of my own work, though I read much more of my old code than my old writing.
• jackschultz 6y ago
  One thing not mentioned that I'd like to add is avoid using pronouns when you can. Like he, she, it, them, this, that. As soon as you have multiple nouns in when explaining something, you can get screwed. I find myself typing pronouns a lot and when I read back what I wrote, I can see how people get confused. Clarity is so important, and pronouns hurt that.
• iou 6y ago
  This looks to be a bit of a distillation of "revising prose" book https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1552699.Revising_Prose https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1552699.Revising_Prose
• divbzero 6y ago
  The Elements of Style by Strunk & White offers similar advice: “Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Style https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Style
  • kashyapc 6y ago
    Although it is a marvelous little book, 'The Elements of Style' is quite lacking. Instead, I'd strongly echo the suggestion of the user 'icu' in this thread[1], where they mention 'Style: Towards Clarity and Grace' by Joseph Williams and Gregory Colomb (there are several editions of this; but any earlier edition would do). To quote from 'Towards Clarity and Grace' (it is alluding to what's lacking in 'The Elements'): [quote] This is a book about writing clearly. I wish it could be short and simple like some others more widely known, but I want to do more than just urge writers to "Omit Needless Words" or "Be clear." Telling me to "Be clear" is like telling me to "Hit the ball squarely." I know that. What I don't know is how to do it. To explain how to write clearly, I have to go beyond platitudes. But I want to do more than just help you write clearly. I also want you to understand this matter to understand why some prose seems clear, other prose not, and why two readers might disagree about it; why a passive verb can be a better choice than an active verb; why so many truisms about style are either incomplete or wrong. More important, I want that understanding to consist not of anecdotal bits and pieces, but of a coherent system of principles more useful than "Write short sentences." [/quote] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24268952 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24268952
• jhpriestley 6y ago
  It is not only the sheer pleasure of reading language used to its utmost, an indulgence found in the enduring literary accomplishments of Shakespeare or Dickens but somewhat lacking in the trendier, reportorial style of a Hemingway (who, after a hundred years, it seems safe to say has not reached the same level of immortal acclaim), but also if I may venture, a particular suitability to the kind of digressive, meandering, rich and nuanced thought, a precious and valuable part of human intellect, a rich roast which loses much of its savor when cut into bite-sized chunks, which recommends, contra all the style advice of today's factory-line English departments, an appreciation and a space for the continuation of the English of Milton and Gibbons and Melville as against the simplified, utilitarian style recommended in the fine article.
  • ipnon 6y ago
    I don't agree with this idea.
  • bonoboTP 6y ago
    That style has its uses for sure. For example if you want to impress people or signal belonging to certain groups. It's also risky to state something in a crystal clear way, because you can be disproved and your status is diminished. As long as you write in long sentences and a confusing academic style, you can feel safe in your lukewarm puddle and enjoy your high status and sneer at the plebs. It's a sign of insecurity and inferiority complex. If you actually have substance to say and feel confident about it, then chunk it up. Clear writing needs courage and is a weapon in itself against the entrenched lazy elites. A slingshot of David against Goliath. While unclear writing is a middle finger towards the public. Also, I disagree that Shakespeare is as obscure and hard to read as your comment would suggest. He is just from a different era but was quite a down-to-earth fellow, not some stuck-up obscurantist.
  • nullgeo 6y ago
    This is a peak pretentious HN comment that gives HN its infamy. It is a pleasure to read that style in literary works, but in your day to day life is that how you want to communicate with people? I think that's what the linked article is talking about, how to use plain English for communication.
• rendall 6y ago
  I love that they destroy those myths, which have become a pox on beautiful, expressive writing. The "no split infinitive" nonsense-rule has a spectacularly shameful history.
• ericsoderstrom 6y ago
  Was the "avoid nominalization" section intended to be tongue-in-cheek? "Nominalization" is itself a nominalization. If the section followed its own advice it would read "don't nominalize [verbs]"
• karaterobot 6y ago
  I don't write in E-Prime, but I think it raises a valid point: you can often clarify and strengthen your English sentences by avoiding the verb "to be". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime
  • pidg 6y ago
    Given someone called John who is a racist, can you find a way to say "John is a racist" in E-Prime without making John seem less racist?
    • retzkek 6y ago
      "John judges others by the color of their skin" maybe? It actually feels an even stronger indictment to me, as it calls out just what is meant by "racist" and how absurd it is.
    • karaterobot 6y ago
      I think the point is that you describe what John does, or how people think of John, rather than what John "is". The Wikipedia article (which constitutes all I know about E-Prime) says: > [The authors of E-Prime] describe misuse of the verb to be as creating a "deity mode of speech", allowing "even the most ignorant to transform their opinions magically into god-like pronouncements on the nature of things". And I think that's appropriate here.
    • ticviking 6y ago
      I think that's kind of the point of using e-prime. We are forced to identify explain specific evidence of behavior that John has done that show that he's a racist. Saying that, "John in frequently unkind to people different from him" or "John commonly uses racial slurs" goes beyond applying a label. This kind of approach to describing the ways people's actions hurt others requires more work. The pay off is that this kind of claim is also harder to credibly dismiss as "grievance culture." Mind you even when trying to stay close to E-prime I still miss the mark all the time.
  • charwalker 6y ago
• ucarion 6y ago
  As others here have mentioned, the British government maintains similar guidance: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/content-design/writing-for-gov-uk https://www.gov.uk/guidance/content-design/writing-for-gov-u... As does the US federal government: https://plainlanguage.gov/ https://plainlanguage.gov/
• bonoboTP 6y ago
  Why is bad writing so common, though? I think this needs further exploration. What are the incentives of the different actors? TL;DR CYA Clearly, the reader just wants to get the information that is relevant for them personally, with the least cognitive effort. Then move on with their day or to the next step in their workflow. The company/government can have various incentives on various levels of the hierarchy/bureaucracy. The boss/owner may want the company to communicate in a snappy, hip, youthful way, in a friendly and clear tone with no bullshit. However, the person/department actually writing the text may want to deflect responsibility, avoid possibilities for blame, keep things vague enough so the onus is on the customer/citizen to make sure everything will work out. They don't want to deviate from process. The customers/citizens should be uniform with no exceptions, because exceptions cause work. If you write too friendly, people will assume they can get favors, that we can start bargaining because they are talking to a real person. Text written in a cold, dispassionate, bureaucratic style will not invite such answers. It signals that things are set in stone, that there is a process in place and we won't say A or B, they will have to figure our A vs. B themselves. For example, I'm a teaching assistant at a university. If I'm buried under too much work with research and get lots of complicated questions from students, I give vague answers so I can't get blamed ("But XY said it would work out this way!"). Also if I use a bunch of official words and formal sentence structure, the student gets the message that I won't do the work instead of them: there can be tons of different rules interacting, different study programs have different rule books etc. In the end it's their responsibility. I cannot give definitive answers, but experience shows, that writing things plainly often invites more haggling than writing in an official tone. The same thing happens when people talk about medical, legal and other potentially dangerous topics. Even if the actual answer is straightforward and will apply in 99% of the cases, nobody gets fired for being too cautious. "Nah don't do that" is the easiest thing to say. Ask your doctor. Ask an attorney. Check the laws of your region. To write plain and clear text, you need to leave all these caveats out. But people will jump at every opportunity to try to shift the blame, and if you weren't careful, it will accumulate on your desk. To avoid this, orgs and lawmakers should make sure to reduce the legal responsibility for saying things. For example I know a(n underpaid) lawyer working for a governmental institution in Hungary. They are in the communications department and give advice on certain legal things to ordinary citizens phoning in or over email. Fortunately, the laws and rules are set up such that they cannot be blamed for answering wrong or not hedging enough, they can write as they would to a family member. It's not "legal advice", because you can't know all circumstances from just an email question. At best, the person or company who acts on such advice can use the email exchange to demonstrate due diligence. They at least tried. Still, it's fully their responsibility to check and interpret the law. Therefore, unless you shield your writers/departments from blame by similar explicit rules, they will shield themselves through vaguery and hedging and complicated writing.
• mcguire 6y ago
  "Apologising: If you are replying to a tricky letter or a complaint, or are dealing with a difficult problem, put yourself in the reader's shoes. Be professional, not emotional. You may have to give a firm, unwelcome answer, but be as helpful and polite as possible. If you are going to apologise, do so early. If the problem is your fault, say so. Apologise completely and concisely, sympathetically and sincerely. And whether it is your fault or not, try to emphasise what you can do for the other person." Wow. Worth the price of entry right there.
• williamsmj 6y ago
  The Plain English Campaign is not a useful authority on English usage. They are a group of prigs and pedants who issue press releases about alleged errors by famous people in the hope they will receive coverage in the British press and bring in work for their consulting business. I'm distressed to learn they now expound at book length and I'm surprised to see this garbage taken seriously by HN. See, e.g. http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002229.html http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002229.h..., https://web.archive.org/web/20110510090548/http://oliverkamm.typepad.com/blog/2004/03/plain_english_b.html https://web.archive.org/web/20110510090548/http://oliverkamm....
  • ajarmst 6y ago
    One problem with plain writing using simple sentence structure, common words and conversational grammar is that it's boring. It has its place: technical writing where facts need to be presented completely and unambiguously as well as writing for non-native speakers are two examples. However, if your goal is to educate, entertain, convince, communicate with passion, or simply express yourself in a way that permits subtlety or complexity, then it's tremendously constraining---and even more boring to write than it is to read.
• ajarmst 6y ago
  This is good advice, but we should be wary of assuming that writing well is easy or a matter of following rules. Like most things worth doing, good writing requires that we practice it regularly and over a period of years, that we are exposed to good writing, and that we have access to competent feedback on our own writing. Every decent writer I know has worked diligently at practice, usually for years. They're also omnivorous readers of good long-form writing. Finally, they seek and are grateful for the advice of a good editor. Talent can help you advance in skill more quickly and perhaps reach a higher ultimate plateau, but it does little to replace the requirement for observation, practice and review. I've often thought that talent is indistinguishable from interest and passion---it's what gets you to do the work, not a replacement for it. Some minor comments: "utilize" should be on the list of words to avoid. I have yet to encounter a use of that word that wouldn't be improved by replacing it with "use". In technical and scientific writing, passive voice can be valuable when the salient concern is not the actor, but the act and its consequences. "The sheep were administered methamphetamine one hour before being tased" focuses on the study, while "we gave the sheep meth and then we tased them" focusses on the scientists. The former is often better for this type of writing. Note: the example is from one of my favourite studies. I wish I had heard about before I chose my thesis topic: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1553-2712.2010.00708.x https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1553-2712...
• 3minus1 6y ago
  Reminds me of this clip of David Foster Wallace where he discusses puffy words like "prior to" and "utilize" that people use for some reason when a much simpler word works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_sQrxAorDo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_sQrxAorDo
• macando 6y ago
  From Stephen King's On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft: "If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around these two things that I’m aware of, no shortcut. I’m a slow reader, but I usually get through seventy or eighty books a year, mostly fiction. I don’t read in order to study the craft; I read because I like to read. It’s what I do at night, kicked back in my blue chair. Similarly, I don’t read fiction to study the art of fiction, but simply because I like stories. Yet there is a learning process going on. Every book you pick up has its own lesson or lessons, and quite often the bad books have more to teach than the good ones" Can't recommend enough this book. Peek inside the mind of the master of writing in Plain English and one of the greatest modern storytellers. For me one of the best non-fiction books out there. Wish more artists produced something like this.