Why plain language may not work for you

I recently came upon this study of terms of use contracts from tech companies. Two things stand out: 

1. A plain language translation of the contracts made it much easier for users to understand what the contract actually said. 

2. At the same time, it made some users trust the companies much less, once they understood what the contract actually said. 

The study says, “Participants inherently trusted companies using plain language summaries more and were more willing to share personal information with them.” However, they backtracked when they realized that the companies were essentially saying, ‘I’m taking your data, I can use it however I want, and you have no legal recourse.’ 

So, does plain language work to win the trust of customers or does it backfire? 

On the face of it, it may appear that it backfired for the tech companies. But let’s dig a little deeper here. Let’s begin from the beginning, or at the top of the funnel, in marketing-speak. Let’s start at how an individual turns into a customer of a company in the first place. 

Typically, companies invest a lot of time and money in understanding their target audience and tailoring their advertising campaigns with terms and visuals that their target persona use, understand, and relate to. They spend oodles of money to come up with taglines with deep emotional pull and strong brand recall. 

However, the same time and effort do not always go into sustaining the customer’s trust once they become a customer. It’s almost as if the companies have split personalities. 

See examples below. 

Exhibit #1: Airtel
Airtel’s homepage feels like a luxury lounge with lots of breathing space. Messaging is clear and crisp. The call to action is staring you in the face. Not an extra syllable.   

But here’s how the terms look like:

I can hardly read it, given the narrow columns down which it’s flowing. This can’t be thought through. Is this a display glitch? For the record, I had opened it on my laptop on Chrome browser. Somehow I find it hard to believe that while the rest of the site is optimized, the terms aren’t?!

Not only are the terms hard on the eyes, but the language also gets denser, more passive, and distanced from the customer, with phrases such as “It is clarified and stated that…” 

Gone is the luxury lounge. I feel ditched. 

Exhibit #2: ICICI Prudential

Here’s an interactive product explainer from ICICI Prudential. It’s easy on the eyes and gives various options for you to play around with and explore. Note that it uses terms such as “his death”. 

In the screenshot below, you can see the use of pronouns such as “we”, “our”, “you”, and “your”.

Now, savour the following text from the terms and conditions: 

“In the event of the Life Assured’s death due to an Accident…” Note how they hesitate from saying “your death”. 

“The revival will take effect only if it is specifically   communicated by Us  to the You.” Yes, the you!!!

“A policy of life insurance may be called in question at any time within three years from the date of issuance of the policy or the date of commencement of risk or the date of revival of the policy or the date of the rider to the policy, whichever is later, on the ground that any statement of or suppression of a fact material to the expectancy of the life of the insured was incorrectly made in the proposal or other document on the basis of which the policy was issued or revived or rider issued: Provided that the insurer shall have to communicate in writing to the insured or the legal representatives or nominees or assignees of the insured the grounds and materials on which such decision to repudiate the policy of life insurance is based: Provided further that in case of repudiation of the policy on the ground of misstatement or suppression of a material fact, and not on the ground of fraud, the premiums collected on the policy till the date of repudiation shall be paid to the insured or the legal representatives or nominees or assignees of the insured within a period of ninety days from the date of such repudiation.” Enough said?

From marketing-speak to legal terms, it does not feel like I am dealing with the same company. Yet, it is the same me they are addressing, either to woo me into being their customer or impose those mind-boggling terms on. 

So, it’s just this: communication from companies is broken. It is disconnected. For me, Airtel is Airtel – the company that provides me cell phone services. ICICI Prudential is the company that provides me life insurance. And so on for all the companies whose products or services I use. I don’t see it as the marketing department of Company X or the legal department of Company Y. When I sense a disconnect in the language of the company, comes the first feeling of I’ve been had. Or at least, that the romance is over. 

The use of plain language throughout the company’s communication can address this gap. It can make the communication feel more connected, more whole. 

But wait, didn’t those tech companies use plain language and yet, some users said they trusted the companies less after their contracts became clearer? Does that mean plain language didn’t work? 

Actually, plain language worked. It worked to help users cut across the jamboree of words and see what the companies actually meant. But if the company’s intention is to harm users or cheat them or take advantage of them in some way, plain language will simple make this intention clear.  

Moral of the story: If plain language is used to “privacy wash” or “ethics wash”, that is, if companies use plain language to pretend to be trustworthy but actually aren’t, it will fail. 

Do not use plain language if you are not ready for it. Plain language is ethical communication, above all else. Yes, it can help your marketing messages become clearer and more focused. Customers can easily understand them and hence trust the company more. But the actual offering of the company must stand up to the promise delivered by the use of plain language. Else, don’t even try. 

Plain language guideline 3: Prefer the active voice

 What is active voice? Here’s an example: 

“I ate the apple.” 

In active voice, the subject of the verb comes first and performs the action. Compare this to the passive voice: 

“The apple was eaten by me.” 

The subject of the verb comes later in passive voice or can be dropped and still be grammatically correct, though enigmatic (“the apple was eaten”). It takes more time and words to convey the same meaning. 

This is why we prefer the active voice in plain language -- cognitive load is higher in the passive voice. That is, it takes more time and effort to figure out what is being said in the passive voice. 

Does that mean we get rid of the passive voice? Banish it altogether? No, we don’t. Even this post uses the passive voice where required. 

As Martin Cutts notes in his Oxford Guide to Plain English, the passive voice is useful:  

    • in defusing hostility

    • in doing away with the subject when it is irrelevant

    • in some other sentence constructions where the receiver of the action is more important than the doer: “The graffiti artist was arrested by the police today.” 

I recently read an article by Erin Brenner favouring the passive voice. Using the passive voice is not technically wrong, but I wouldn’t go so far as to love the passive voice. Here’s why: 

>> Passive voice is commonly used when someone somewhere wants to evade responsibility or suppress information about the doer. Not surprisingly, it is widespread in bureaucratic communication. Either the doer is dropped altogether or distanced very well from the action. If I am editing for plain language, I am editing for the cause of clarity, better consumer or civic rights, even better health. I cannot simply shrug my shoulders and walk on if I don’t know who is the doer. I stop to ask why this information is being withheld. Of course, if one is merely editing copy according to the client’s brief which may not include compliance with plain language guidelines, activism is not required. 

>> It can also be confusing when the doer of the action is so far removed from the action. If the goal is clarity, more often than not I may have to recast the sentence in active voice. 

>> Brenner’s article mentions objectivity as one of the benefits of passive voice and the reason why it's so popular in academic and scientific writing. Here I must disagree. This is a myth that has choked academic and scientific writing and rendered them nearly unreadable and definitely un-enjoyable. As this excellent article by Kerry Evans points out, even scientists should (and very well can) avoid the passive voice and still be objective. She says, “I fail to see how writing the cells were lysed is more objective than writing we lysed the cells.” 

She adds that using the active voice doesn’t always mean writing in the first person, which is seen as a limitation by pro-passive writers. See these examples from her: 

It has recently been found that antibodies that bind quaternary E protein might contribute to this effect.

Protein was not removed from the centrosome by exposure to nocodozole.

When re-written in the active voice:

Recent studies have found that antibodies that bind quaternary E protein might contribute to this effect.

Exposure to nocodozole did not remove protein from the centrosome.

And, if active voice does necessitate the use of the first person, what of it? Academic and scientific papers are also written by human beings (or at least were till the advent of AI) and using “I” or “we” does not decrease, or for that matter increase, the objectivity of the paper. 

So while we need not ban the passive voice, we definitely need to favour the active voice if our goals are reader-friendliness, clarity, and brevity. 

Plain Language 2: Use common, plain words

What is it about big words? Why do we use pompous words or jargon when shorter, plainer words will do just the same, or even better?

Note that big words and jargon are not the same, but they almost always have the same effect – confusing the reader. Big words are, well, big words, and jargon refers to terms of a trade or profession that are usually well understood only by members of that trade or profession.

Read the rest of the article here.

Plain language guideline 1: Avoid long sentences

Long sentences come at you like hissing snakes, says Martin Cutts in his Oxford Guide to Plain English. He prescribes an average sentence length of 15-20 words. GOV.UK says they try to not go beyond 25 words.  

A study conducted by the American Press Institute found that readers understood 90% of the information when sentences were at 14 words and less than 10% when they were at 43 words. 

That’s a lot of research stacked up in favour of shorter sentences (and there’s more, by the way). But remember this is the “average sentence length”. Which means that not every sentence needs to be short. 

But what is it about long sentences that makes them so difficult? 

For one, it’s too many ideas crammed into one sentence. It’s as if the author is breathlessly gushing out everything they have to say, afraid that if they slow down they might just lose the reader. 

But they have already lost the reader by the time the reader is past the 30th, 50th, or, God forbid, the 100th word. If at all the brave reader makes it to the last word, they have no clue how they ended up there. 

Secondly, it just doesn’t seem like the author is considerate to the reader’s needs. 

In the image below, you will see an excerpt from a letter written by a forest department official to another official in the town municipality. It says that some trees have been considered dangerous, are coming in the way of road expansion, and hence need to be cut. It asks the town municipality to cut the trees, prepare a list of the trees cut, and ferry them to the forest depot. 

Now, this letter is between two bureaucrats. So you may say let them wallow in their own verbosity. But this is a public document. People have the right to understand it. And, have no doubt about it, the officer would write in the same way even if they were addressing members of the public. 

I had blogged about the letter and its context some time ago. Recently, Vikram Hegde, a Supreme Court advocate and plain language enthusiast, pinged me about this post. He said, 

“I have been noticing this specific type of unpunctuated writing in Indian languages, in government documents of all types. We often see a sequence of events over 20 years being described in one sentence, in an FIR or a chargesheet. 

I used to think that this happens because the authority is setting out the circumstances in which it is deciding to take a step. It wants to enumerate all the circumstances and reasons in the same sentence so as to directly link it to the action. But I have come to realize that authorities utilize this form of complex writing to actively avoid scrutiny of their decisions. Writing a jumble of reasons enables them to avoid tying the decision down to any one reason which may or may not be valid or applicable. Bureaucratese is active avoidance of accountability!”

Very valid point! If you are ever questioned about something, there’s all that gobbledygook you can hide behind. 

It’s not surprising that long sentence-paragraphs such as these are written by people in a position of authority. When you don’t understand them, they believe they have some power over you. They can tell you you have no idea how the government works, or law works, or some such thing. 

Thirdly, it takes a lot of time to understand these sentences. The reader has to re-read, break up the sentence, and organize the information in their head to make any sense of it. So the reader is rewriting and editing as they go – something authors have no business asking of the reader. 

Fourthly, errors can creep in when the sentence has gone out of control. In the example I have used here, there are quite a few typos and spelling mistakes. Obviously, the author is themselves so drained by the burden of writing such sentences that they couldn’t be bothered with mundane things such as spelling. Sometimes, these errors can further muddle up the reader. 

So, my friend, want to write clearly? Start with writing shorter sentences. 

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I am a plain language writer, editor, consultant, and trainer. If you wish to hire me for plain language services, please use the contact form on the right.  

Label padhega India, par kaise?

Translation of the title: India will read labels, but how?

I love Revant Himatsingka’s videos on food and nutrition. I first came to know about him from the Label Padhega India campaign. He urged people to read the labels on food products before they buy them. The campaign became hugely popular, thanks to Revant’s candid style and approach of putting data first. It tried to bring transparency to the food industry – something sorely lacking in India.

It hits you hard when you consider that this industry is worth nearly USD 30 billion and hardly any rules to govern the production and sale of junk food. No wonder companies from the world over are making a beeline to India.

As if on cue, the Supreme Court recently asked the Indian government to come up with guidelines to clearly display nutritional information on the labels of food products.

Both the Label Padhega India campaign and the apex court’s directive are all headed in the right direction. Companies must responsibly announce what they are trying to feed consumers. There is no question about it.

However, both these moves miss a point. It’s great for Indians to start reading food labels. But will they understand what they read?

For one, the food labels are all in English, cutting off access for most Indians right away. Revant suggests a hack for this: the label must include a QR code which can link to a webpage with nutritional information in all Indian languages. However, I doubt if this step is enough to make labels easy to understand.

Why so? That’s because plain language standards are sorely lacking in India and you can expect the same on food labels.

For example, when it says “fortified”, it means “added” in the food labelling context. So why not say “added” in the first place?

But plain language is not just about using simpler words. It is about the audience and what the audience finds plain enough. In countries like India where health awareness is seriously lacking, what does “low fat” mean? How low is low? According to Better Health Channel, anything calling itself low fat must contain less than 3% fat for solid foods (1.5% for liquid foods). So, if something is being advertised as 93% fat-free, it still has 7% fat, which is not low.

Even saying that a soft drink contains x amount of caffeine may not be enough, as we don’t know how much caffeine is too much for us. Gov.UK recommends that apart from declaring the nutrition information in ml or mg, we also need clear warnings that say “High caffeine: not recommended for children or pregnant women”.

Then again, a label is not just about the text. We need plain design as well. The US FDA has detailed guidelines on how different elements of a food label must be displayed [pdf].

Labelling shouldn’t be about marketing. Take this label of a popular wheat shavige (seviyan/vermicelli) brand. 

It says, “No added maida”. It made me wonder if the vermicelli is made of maida (refined flour) or wheat?  When the ingredients list clearly states that it contains wheat semolina, why bother to say that your product doesn’t have something it is not supposed to have anyway? If the company meant to market its product to consumers who want to avoid maida, it could have simply said, “No maida”. Just don’t add the word “added” to serve your marketing purposes. It’s confusing!

Of course, given the low level of health literacy and that fact that Indians reach out for the next pack of chips or the next bottle of cold drinks without a qualm, why bother with nutritional information? Will labelling something as highly salty or sugary stop the Indian consumer?

There are many answers to this, but perhaps the most relevant is that we are making a big assumption by saying that people don’t care. How do we know that for a fact? Has a genuine attempt been made to inform the consumer? Do we have data to show comparisons between sales before and after clear nutritional labelling was provided?

We have to make a start somewhere in eating right. Clearly displayed nutritional information in plain language is the first step. 

The Fowler Brothers: Still relevant, still ignored

“Prefer the familiar word to the far-fetched. 

Prefer the concrete word to the abstract. 

Prefer the single word to the circumlocution. 

Prefer the short word to the long. 

Prefer the Saxon word to the Romance.”

This was the advice the Fowler brothers gave in their book, The King’s English, more than a century ago. 

Take a moment to mull over their words. Is there anything that sounds illogical?

Not really, if you ask me. It’s the soundest advice aspiring writers can get. Yet even today we find it difficult to follow. 

“Prefer the familiar word to the far-fetched.”
Why do we want to use highfalutin words when we can inform more easily with everyday words? Why does every piece of writing become an opportunity to impress, not express? Even a specialist audience would rather not have to deal with jargon. Supreme Court Justices D Y Chandrachud and A S Boppanna sent back a verdict by the Himachal Pradesh High Court and said it was “incomprehensible” and “difficult to navigate through”. 

“Prefer the concrete word to the abstract.”
Concrete words paint a picture to the reader more than abstract words can. I remember Jyoti Sanyal would often tell us in journalism school, “Show, don’t tell.” He meant that we must use words to describe the scene to the reader in such a way that they can “see” what we are talking about as if they were physically present. Great writing often makes you feel this way.  Among the recent texts I’ve read, William Dalrymple’s The Age of Kali reminded me of Sanyal’s edict:

“Then, quite suddenly, a carved wooden temple rath appeared in the centre of the principal ceremonial avenue from a side passage, pushed by a swarm of half-naked figures. Their progress was lit by a succession of temple priests holding brightly burning yellow splints dipped in camphor oil. In a silken tabernacle at the top of the rath lay the golden image of the goddess herself, garlanded and draped in cloth-of-gold her nose-jewel flashing in the flames of the priests’ burning splints.”

I could almost see the goddess’ gleaming nose ring. That’s the power of descriptive, tangible words. 

“Prefer the single word to the circumlocution.”
The sooner you can get to the point, you do everyone a favour. But mind you, it is not easy to write succinctly.  As someone famously said, “I’d have written a shorter letter, but didn’t have the time.” Writing briefly requires that you understand fully well the subject of your text and can express it lucidly, without reaching out for crutch words. 

“Prefer the short word to the long.”
We read and understand shorter words faster. They are also usually simpler and more familiar. Longer words are not banned but must be used only if necessary. Feel no shame in using everyday words – in fact, your readers will thank you! 

“Prefer the Saxon word to the Romance.”
Here, the Fowler brothers meant that writers in England must prefer English words more than Latinate words, which weren’t really in daily parlance and only served to intimidate readers and bloat the ego of the writers. In the Indian context, we must prefer words from the regional language or our mother tongues rather than Sanskrit words. Our official documents are replete with Sanskrit words that nobody understands. Whenever I see any attempt to translate from English to a regional language [pdf], it is almost always Sanskritized. Again, knowledge of Sanskrit seems to be something to show off. 

Note that all the statements start with “prefer”. Meaning, that these are guidelines in the truest spirit and not an attempt to straitjacket writing. 

Plain language and design rethink: IRCTC

A few days ago, I booked a train ticket on the IRCTC website. I then had to cancel it for some reason. I tried to look up the cancellation and refund procedures. It wasn’t an easy find or read. I noted a few things down on how the website could be better with plain language and design and improved user experience.

For those not aware, irctc.co.in is the official website of the Indian Railways for online ticket booking. With a monthly traffic of about 13 million, it is one of the most visited websites in India. 

User experience
The cancellation and refund procedures are hidden away as PDFs. Why so, when we know that PDFs cause frustration and slow task completion. A webpage makes for better user experience than a pdf: Its easier to navigate, is interactive, and does not require you to download it.

An explanation video would have done the job much better, especially for cancellation. But given that it is a government website, I am not going to push that too much.

As I write this, I realize that’s how I have been conditioned to expect less from the government, not more. This post shall then be about overcoming this conditioning: to expect more from the government, indeed, to demand it.

A few other things I noted were (a) the general busyness of the website, which was mildly disorienting to me. The chatbot takes too much space on the screen. Even when minimized, it’s prominent. 

And (b) the glaring lack of translation, even machine translation. For such a highly-used website in a country that speaks so many languages, how do you explain this?

Now, the language part.
The document is confused about how to address the user. It says “user,” “you”, and “passenger” at different times. It’s better to address the user in just one way, and “you” will do just fine. But what definitely needs to be changed is the use of the possessive pronoun “his”.

Some other plain language edits:

Original
“Access IRCTC e-Ticketing website by providing correct Username and Password on Login screen.”

Plain language version

“Log in to the IRCTC e-Ticketing website.”
(Obviously, if you do not provide the correct username and password, you cannot log in. Why bloat the sentence then?)

Original
“If user wishes to cancel his e-ticket, go to 'My Transactions' and Click 'Booked Ticket History' link under My Account menu.”

Plain language version

“Go to 'My Transactions' and Click 'Booked Ticket History' link under My Account menu.”
(The user is reading the e-ticket cancellation guide. What other purpose in life could they possibly have at that point?)


Still, all of this is far better than the language of the refund rules document which simply reproduces the government’s gazette notification. No attempt has been made to rewrite the text for laypersons.

Original
“If amount debited from customer account and ticket not issued, IRCTC will refund the entire Fare and IRCTC convenience fee electronically (as credit to the relevant credit /debit card account used for the transaction), but the bank/card transaction charges are likely to be forfeited.”

Plain language version

“If the amount is debited from your account and ticket not issued, IRCTC will refund the fare and IRCTC convenience fee electronically to your account. However, you may lose the bank/card transaction charges.”

Original
“In case of e-tickets shall be cancelled online or online TDR shall be filed within the time limits prescribed under these rules for obtaining refund.

Where a RAC ticket or wait-listed ticket is presented for cancellation, the refund of fare shall be made after deducting the clerkage if the ticket is present for cancellation upto thirty minutes before the scheduled departure of the train irrespective of the distance.”

Plain language version

“To obtain a refund, cancel e-tickets online or file the TDR online within the time limits mentioned here.

Cancel an RAC ticket or wait-listed ticket at least 30 minutes before train departure. IRCTC will then refund the fare minus its fee.”
(Clerkage seems to be railway jargon. The user doesn’t need to be bothered with it. IRCTC charge or fee gets the meaning across.)


The edits I have provided here are not the only way of simplifying these sentences, but are only guidelines. The point being that IRCTC needs to talk “to” its users and not “down” at them. And that writing in plain language is not all that difficult, if the intention is to help achieve the user’s objective as quickly and easily as possible.