Plain Writing: How to Be Understood on the First Read

"Pursuant to the aforementioned policy, it is incumbent upon all personnel to ensure that the utilization of company vehicles is restricted to activities of a business-related nature."

Or:

"Only use company cars for work."

Same rule. One version takes three readings and sounds like a threat. The other takes two seconds. Plain writing is not "dumbing down." It is the skill of getting your meaning into another person's head with the least possible effort on their side.

Why we write badly

Almost nobody sets out to be unclear. Bad writing usually has one of three causes.

The curse of knowledge. Once you know something, it's very hard to imagine not knowing it. Psychologists call this the "curse of knowledge," and Steven Pinker argues it is the main reason good people write bad prose. You skip steps that feel obvious, use terms you've stopped noticing are jargon, and leave the reader to fill gaps they can't fill.

Trying to sound smart. Long words feel impressive. The research says they backfire. In a 2006 study with the self-mocking title "Consequences of Erudite Vernacular Utilized Irrespective of Necessity," psychologist Daniel Oppenheimer found that people judged writers of needlessly complex text as less intelligent than writers of simple text. (The paper won an Ig Nobel Prize, given to research that will "first make people laugh, and then make them think.")

Not knowing what you think. Fog in the writing often means fog in the thinking. If you can't say your main point in one sentence, the problem isn't your prose yet.

Clear writing isn't a lower standard. It's a higher one: you've done the reader's work for them.

Who your reader actually is

Plain writing matters because readers vary far more than writers assume.

• In 2023, 28% of US adults aged 16 to 65 scored at the lowest level (Level 1 or below) in the OECD's international literacy survey, up from 19% in 2017.
• The UK government's writing guidance cites studies estimating that 1 in 6 adults in England has very poor literacy skills.
• Many of your readers are reading in their second or third language (see Learning a Language as an Adult in this category).
• And everyone, including experts, reads quickly, on a phone, while distracted.

It isn't just for beginners. GOV.UK reports research on legal documents in which 80% of people preferred sentences in clear English, and the more educated and specialist the reader, the stronger that preference. Experts can decode jargon. They'd rather not.

Governments have noticed. The US Plain Writing Act of 2010 requires federal agencies to write public documents clearly, and plain English is mandatory on GOV.UK, the British government's website.

Seven habits of plain writing

1. Put the point first

Start with what the reader most needs: the answer, the decision, the action. Journalists call this the inverted pyramid, and the military calls it BLUF, "bottom line up front." Background comes after.

• ❌ Following our meeting last Tuesday and further discussion with the finance team regarding the budget situation, we have decided that...
• ✅ We're moving the launch to March. Here's why.

2. Use the short, common word

Many of the short words are Old English and the long ones are Latin (see Where English Words Come From in this category). The short words aren't less precise. They're just easier to read.

3. Keep sentences short, but vary them

GOV.UK's guidance is a good rule of thumb: try to split any sentence over 25 words, and keep paragraphs to five sentences or fewer. One idea per sentence. Then vary the rhythm so it doesn't read like a list of instructions.

4. Say who does what

Active voice names the actor: "The council will collect bins on Friday." Passive voice can hide it: "Bins will be collected." By whom? Use active voice by default. Passive is fine when the actor doesn't matter or is unknown ("The bridge was built in 1890").

5. Turn nouns back into verbs

Words ending in -tion and -ment often hide the action inside a noun.

• ❌ We will conduct an investigation into the matter.

• ✅ We will investigate.

• ❌ The committee reached a decision to make an amendment to the rules.

• ✅ The committee decided to amend the rules.

6. Explain the term you can't avoid

Specialist words are sometimes necessary. Use them, and explain them in plain English the first time.

7. Make it easy to scan

Readers on screens skim. Useful headings, short paragraphs, bulleted lists for steps or options, and bold for the one thing they must not miss all help them find their way. Write headings that say something ("Apply by 30 June"), not labels ("Information").

A before-and-after

Before (63 words):

It has come to our attention that there has been a significant increase in the number of instances in which employees have failed to submit their expense reports in a timely manner, and it should be noted that, going forward, reports that are not received by the stipulated deadline may not be processed until the following payment cycle, which may result in delays.

After (26 words):

Please submit expense reports by the 5th of each month. Reports that arrive late will be paid a month later. Lately, many reports have been late.

Point first. Short words. Active voice. Less than half the length, and nothing lost.

Where the rules come from, and their limits

The most famous list of plain-writing rules is George Orwell's, from his 1946 essay "Politics and the English Language": never use a stale figure of speech, never use a long word where a short one will do, cut every word you can, prefer active to passive, avoid jargon and foreign phrases when everyday English works, and break any of these rules "sooner than say anything outright barbarous."

It's a great list, and the last rule is the most important. Orwell admitted in the essay itself that readers would find him committing "the very faults I am protesting against." The linguist Geoffrey Pullum, an admirer of Orwell, calls the ban on all familiar phrases "unfollowable," and usage experts have long criticized the blanket rule against the passive. Treat these as defaults, not laws. Sometimes the long word is the precise one. Sometimes the passive is right. The goal is always the same: would my reader get this on the first read?

The takeaway

Plain writing means getting your meaning across with the least effort for the reader. It's harder than writing fog, because it forces you to know what you think. Put the point first, choose short common words, keep sentences short and active, turn hidden nouns back into verbs, explain unavoidable terms, and make the page easy to scan. Plain English isn't only for weak readers: experts prefer it too, and writers who use needlessly complex language come across as less intelligent, not more.

Try this: take the next email or message you're about to send and do three things before you hit send. Move your main point to the first sentence. Swap any word from the "instead of" table. Cut one sentence that doesn't earn its place. Then read it as someone who wasn't in the room.

Sources & Further Reading

Sources
- Oppenheimer, "Consequences of erudite vernacular utilized irrespective of necessity: problems with using long words needlessly," Applied Cognitive Psychology (2006), and its 2006 Ig Nobel Prize in Literature: Wikipedia, "Daniel M. Oppenheimer."
- The curse of knowledge (Camerer, Loewenstein & Weber; Fischhoff's hindsight-bias work): Wikipedia, "Curse of knowledge." Pinker's view: The Sense of Style (2014).
- US literacy, 28% at Level 1 or below in 2023 versus 19% in 2017: US National Center for Education Statistics, PIAAC 2023 national results.
- GOV.UK writing guidance, "Use clear language" and "Create a clear structure for your content": plain English mandatory; literacy estimates for the four UK nations; 80% preference for clear English in legal documents; split sentences over 25 words; paragraphs of five sentences or fewer; frontloading and the inverted pyramid; the word swaps buy, help and about.
- Plain Writing Act of 2010 (Public Law 111-274, effective 13 October 2010): Wikipedia.
- Orwell's six rules and Pullum's criticism: Wikipedia, "Politics and the English Language."

Go deeper
- 📘 The Sense of Style by Steven Pinker: why the curse of knowledge drives bad prose, and what to do instead
- 📘 On Writing Well by William Zinsser: the classic on clear, warm non-fiction
- 🌐 GOV.UK: Use clear language: one of the best free plain-writing guides anywhere
- 🌐 The Orwell Foundation: "Politics and the English Language": the full 1946 essay, free
- 🌐 Related: Grammar Without Tears and Punctuation That Changes Meaning in this category; How to Write a Book in The Default Course