What is plain English?

Plain English is clear, straightforward expression, using only as many words as are necessary. It is language that avoids obscurity, inflated vocabulary and convoluted sentence construction. It is not baby talk, nor is it a simplified version of the English language. Writers of plain English let their audience concentrate on the message instead of being distracted by complicated language. They make sure that their audience understands the message easily.

– Professor Robert Eagleson

Who needs plain English?

Just about anyone who writes. Research has shown:

• Managers claim that 80 percent of their employees lack good writing skills.
• Employees claim managers are poor writers, set bad examples and offer little guidance to improve their documents.
• Whole professions, lawyers, government officials, social scientists, computer technicians have reputations for bad writing and poor communication.
• But when people were asked if they had good writing and communications skills, everyone claimed they did.

If you use a word processor to write, StyleWriter offers you better quality documents.
StyleWriter is for anyone who writes:

• Advertisers for better ads, leaflets and press releases.
• Editors who want to use software to develop a house style.
• Journalists to check and polish their writing style.
• Judges for legal briefs to be just that – brief.
• Lawyers trying to break centuries of bad writing habits.
• Scientists who want to write clearly about complex issues.
• Social Scientists who want to sound human.
• Students wanting to get A-Grade essays.
• Technical Authors for shorter, readable documentation.
• You, if you want to learn the secrets of clear, direct language.

Good Writing Comes from Strong Proofreading & Editing

The secret to becoming a better writer is to use these principles to proofread and edit your draft. Here is a typical business memo. Good editing, using these principles cuts its length by more than half and results in a clearer style.

Why doesn’t everyone write in plain English?

Most organizations and individuals recognize customer letters, brochures, emails, management reports should be clear and concise. Yet most documents fail any basic, plain English test. Why?
The traditional response has been for employees to go on business writing courses and expect one day’s tuition to transform the way they think and write. In tests, people going on traditional business writing courses showed little improvement (typically only a short-lived 10 percent measured by StyleWriter’s ratings). A month later most participants fell back to their old habits.

There are many reasons for this failure. Here are the important ones:

• The culture of business and government encourages poor writing. Most people’s writing style comes from the documents they see around them. So unless you train everyone in effective writing, improving writing standards is difficult.
• Most people think they do write clearly, although at least 80 percent of documents in organizations are badly written and full of poor style faults.
• Managers often believe the problem is never with their writing style, but with the style of their staff. Managers happily send their staff to writing courses. But after the course, the managers continue to redraft the new, clearer style back into management-speak. The unspoken message to the person trying to write clearly is: “Don’t write clearly, write as I do.”
• Most writers are so close to their jargon and style they cannot see their writing faults. They have no idea why others find their documents difficult to read and understand.
• Many people believe the long-winded, complex style of business and government is the expected and agreed style. Many employees look at existing documents and copy the style. This means people who normally speak clearly and write well, quickly pick up the stilted style of their colleagues.
• Many people learned to write at university and college where length and an impressive vocabulary seemed to be
  a virtue. Yet in the workplace, everyone wants short, clear documents to communicate quickly and efficiently.
• Only one person in 50 attends training in effective writing. Organizing and running courses is time-consuming and expensive. If you use outside consultants to run them, they can cost up to $1,500 for ten people. Plain language software is much more economical.
• There’s no backup to writing training. Most people only remember one-third of the training ideas and put even fewer into practice. Plain English editing software means writers constantly learn ways to improve their style.