Under the terms of relevant legislation, the amount of time which an employee is permitted to take off and the conditions surrounding the taking of such time off are required to be reasonable having regard to the amount of time off required for the duties, the circumstances of the employer's business and the effect of the employee's absence on the running of that business.“
If you find this hard to read, confusing, or hard to understand, you’re not alone. In this Blog, Graeme and Neil explore why Plain English can help you get your message across in a simpler, more inclusive way.

Introduction

Neil McBeth

I didn’t really enjoy English at school, so I was surprised during a recent training course, when I found myself genuinely having fun searching through a paragraph of text for passive verbs, past-participles, and nominalised adjectives.
What’s happened to me? What are these odd terms? And why do I suddenly care about grammar? I’d stumbled upon the concept of Plain English.

Graeme Gilkes

Interestingly I was the opposite, I loved some of the school texts I read growing up, the imagery of Ted Hughes, how Gatsby transported you from a chilly classroom in Lanark to a hot steaming summer in Long Island during 20’s prohibition. The precision of the writing meant each word worked hard to create these wonderful locations and images in a young imagination.

My Experience/Where it started

Neil

I’ve never been a quick reader and find things like legal documents quite difficult. Long sentences with too many ideas tend to leave me feeling lost, re-reading something multiple times. And having to guess the meaning of jargon or buzzwords can be confusing and alienating. (technical language in the right setting isn’t jargon)

In late 2023 I was approached by the HR team to help update our Cycle to Work policy. They were re-writing the policy with a very different style than before, using a friendlier tone, ‘we’ and ‘you’ instead of ‘the University’ and ‘staff members’, and shorter and snappier sentences.

My brain was tickled to know this wasn’t just one person’s style – there was a system, guides and rules (yay) – Plain English.

What is Plain English?

Communication is an important part of all jobs, especially at a university with a wide and varied audience and diverse community.
Plain English is a style of writing that makes your communication more easily accessible for all audiences, but especially for readers with dyslexia, visual impairments, or English as a second language.

Its main purpose is to help your message be understood as clearly, and as quickly as possible, by the widest audience – which seems a sensible aim for any bit of writing or discussion.

The University of Strathclyde (UoS) rightly prides itself on strategic inclusion and furthering the use of ‘Plain English’ could be a game changing practice to add to this armoury.

Graeme

In the past I worked for a company who boasted Microsoft (MS) as a client. When reporting for meetings or situational updates they insisted on a simple 5 bullet point format. If you sent in 2 pages of text you got it back unread. Why?

MS wanted you to understand the situation better, did you know enough to distil the issue into 5 bullets? If not, go and ensure you do as you are not ready to discuss and provide solutions. Poor understanding can easily be hidden behind waffle and platitude, a plain English approach mitigates this, acting as a time saver and productivity tool.

Could Higher Education (HE) learn some lessons? In providing 40 pages of paper for a meeting are we removing the responsibility of understanding ourselves and hoping someone else will? Where should the work of understanding be done?

What Plain English is not

• It’s not dumbing down your writing or making it overly simple. Complex concepts can be described in clear and commonly used terms.
• It doesn’t mean you can’t use variation. Using different words and explanation approaches is a great way to widen understanding, however, stay away from the ‘wherewithal and thereafter.’

How will using plain English impact me?

Graeme

Communication is a selfless act, the benefit is almost always for someone else, to increase their understanding, make them aware of something new, alert them to something etc. It would seem counterproductive to deliberately structure this in such a way that it reduces comprehension. Being more understood will make you recognised as inclusive, clear, knowledgeable, a teacher.

Less is more.

Neil

You don’t always know exactly who you’re communicating with and the quicker and more fully you can get someone to understand that the better. Speaking a common level of language helps here, driving an inclusive, and consistent interpretation.

Putting it into Practice

Do’s and Don’ts 

• Do make sure you understand what you are trying to say. Take time to plan and don’t just pass on someone else’s message without fully understanding the meaning.
• Do keep your sentences short, around 15-20 words on average, but don’t be afraid to have some variation.
• Do think about your audience when planning your message. Focus on what your reader needs to know and understand, not what you want to say.
• Do always write out acronyms in full the first time they’re used, and re-write them in full for each section of a longer document.
• Do use an active rather passive voice for clearer more concise writing. This is especially helpful when communicating who needs to do what.
• Do use a friendlier, less formal tone by saying ‘we’ and ‘you’ instead of ‘the University’ and ‘staff members’ for example.
• Don’t assume your audience has the same characteristics as you. Humour done badly can appear cheeky or sarcastic, losing the message and the recipient again.
• Don’t use specialist language in communication to a general audience, it can decrease understanding of the message you are trying to deliver.

Jargon

Jargon is specialised language used within a specific field or profession. It can be confusing or even meaningless to those outside that field.

• Examples: "Synergy," "bandwidth," "paradigm shift", "monetise". 
• Instead of: "Let's synergise our efforts," try "Let's work together."

Formal language

Using unnecessarily complex or stilted language can make communication seem stiff and difficult to understand.

• Examples: "Herewith," "heretofore," "aforementioned," "commence".
• Instead of: "Please find attached herewith the report," try "The report is attached."

Slang and Colloquialisms

While slang can be part of informal conversation, it can be inappropriate in formal or professional settings.

• Examples: "Dude", "ain't", "lit", "chill".
• Instead of: "That's lit dude", try "That's great".

Nominalisations

Nominalisations are nouns created from verbs or adjectives, often adding unnecessary complexity.

• Examples: "Herewith," "heretofore," "aforementioned," "commence".
• Instead of: "Please find attached herewith the report," try "The report is attached."

The message in this blog is clear (we hope). We are not asking you to limit all your messaging to short sentences containing two syllable words and no inflection. This is not the intent of plain English, communication has great potential to inspire, make it interesting, tell stories, engage.

Strike a balance between simplicity/detail/and being exact.

Our goal is to be understood as clearly, and as quickly as possible, by the widest audience.

Extra resources

• The Plain English Campaign has a list of free guides as well as online and in person training.
• The Strathclyde Accessibility SharePoint has guides on content accessibility – which overlaps well with Plain English techniques.
• University of Kent have produced a short guide on how to write in plain English.
• Watch this short video about a common culprit: Beware of Nominalization (or nouning).