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. 

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. 

Five key learnings from Better Posters

I recently attended a webinar on "Better Posters" by Mike Morrison. My key learnings from the webinar:

1. With posters, you need to communicate fast. You have a few seconds to catch someone's attention as they walk past your poster in an exhibition or corridor. The information you are putting out may be important. It's necessary to try and aim at reaching your message to ALL of those who pass by, rather than just a few.

2. Get in touch with your feelings. Mike repeated this often. And I wondered why. It then struck me that perhaps when you are creating a science poster, you reduce the communication to the mere facts and drain out all human elements from it. This can happen when empathy is missing from the communication.

If the poster is about a drug claiming to cure cancer, it is important information for someone who is suffering from cancer and for someone who is treating cancer patients. How can we get the top-level information of a poster to these people in a few seconds? For the communicator, it may merely be information. For the cancer patient, it may make a difference to their life.

Only when we are in touch with our own feelings can we even fathom how the intended audience might receive the message.

3. Another thing that he repeated often was to communicate the same message across visual, verbal, and emotional channels. Sometimes, in presentations the on-screen text is about one thing while the speaker is saying something that is not exactly the same -- the speaker may be introducing some additional information. This can be jarring and delay comprehension.

4. Templates can bring in boredom or synaptic fatigue, as Mike put it. Slide after slide, if information is presented in the same way, you might just zoom out. Bring in variety. Even talk differently during a presentation, Mike advised. I wonder how this piece of advice would sit with marketing folks. The same message is bombarded on to our senses again and again in the name of branding. Perhaps this is one reason why people tune out of advertisements.

5. Avoid chunky text or too much text in posters. It's easy to be over-enthusiastic in pouring out every bit of information into the poster. However, we need to deliver the top-level information in just a few seconds. That's the hook to convert the passer-by into an interested reader. Once this happens, you can go incrementally into more details.

Plain language: a portal to translation, accessibility, user experience

Plain language intersects with many other professions. It can be an enabler of better translation, better accessibility, and better user experience (UX).

Let me explain how. And, at the end of the article, I also talk about how all four areas of work can and should come together to enable a better experience of the web for anyone.

I write this article because I have worked in the translation industry and I am a plain language writer and editor. Yet, I often see that professionals in both fields work in parallel, but hardly together. Such bubbles also perhaps exist between accessibility and plain language, and UX and plain language. This article is an attempt to show that together is better.

Plain language and translation

Plain language is, in actuality, an act of translation. A plain language editor converts mystifying mumbo-jumbo into information that the intended audience can understand and use. If you compare the before and after versions, it might just feel like two different languages!

A translator also needs to be a plain language writer and editor. At least, a good translator does.

When a translator first encounters a chunk of text in the source language, they must first understand it. If this is text is not in plain language, the translator – whether or not they acknowledge it – mentally does the plain language editing. Only then, can they proceed to write the text in the target language.

As Dominique Joseph, translator and plain language trainer, puts it, “[Translators] translate the meaning, not the words.” She goes on to describe a number of steps that she takes as a translator to make the text “easy to read, easy to understand, easy to use.” She has put it wonderfully and you should head over to her blog to read it in full.

As I went through her steps, I realized that what she is describing is about “helping readers find what they are looking for, understand it, and then take action based on that information.” And that, my friend, is plain language.

When plain language moves from being a mental process of the translator to being an explicit step in translation, or better still in authoring, translation improves.

Marie-Elise Georgelin, plain language trainer at Labrador Language Services, writes in the latest PLAIN E-journal, “...using plain language means:

• messages can sink in faster

• there are fewer misinterpretations

• translations will be quicker, more effective, and more accurate.”

When Labrador’s translation team worked on plain source text, they produced translations which also had a high plain language score and fewer words. “The quality of the source text systematically improved the translation by the same amount,” Georgelin writes. She says plain language in the source text can also similarly improve machine translation output.

Plain language and accessibility

Plain language is an essential part of the accessibility tool kit. The Washington Post says, “Writing in plain language makes our content more accessible to a wide variety of people, including those with cognitive disabilities, lower reading literacy and less background knowledge of the topic or concept being covered. This also matters in the design of user interfaces.”

A more targeted version of plain language is available for people with reading and learning disabilities. It is called Easy to Read. It helps “people with intellectual disabilities learn new things and take part in society,” to name a few benefits.

A few years ago, I worked for an online entertainment magazine where I would re-write popular news items into easy-to-read articles. I would first re-write them in plain language and then do an easy-to-read version. Doing the plain language re-write was the bulk of the work, I observed. Easy-to-read was just taking care of a few more technical things from that point.

Again, you don’t always have to be disabled to appreciate how plain language can make text more accessible to you. Imagine going through a dense paragraph filled with jargon and big, confusing words when you have a splitting headache.

Plain language and user experience (UX)

UX is at the very heart of the plain language movement. Plain language was born to serve only one purpose: help the user achieve their objective. “User” may not be the particular word they used back in the 1970s when the first efforts began to write in plain language. But whether you call them the reader, consumer, or citizen, it is still the same thing.

When a user is on your website, you cannot hem and haw, throw fat slabs of gobbledygook at them, and expect them to be still hanging around. The user is on your website for a purpose. And, the plain reality is that your content must help them achieve that purpose.

Plain language lets you have that conversation with your user without getting in their way, without alienating them. It is about sharing information they are seeking and came to your website for.

By writing in plain language, you also hit the right spots with SEO. People almost always use plain language when they are searching for something. If your content is already embedded with these keywords, your potential users will find you right away.



Not to forget that all of the above areas of work – translation, accessibility, and UX – also have several overlaps and that none are enough on their own, not even plain language.

For instance, translation increases accessibility. Let’s remember that the purpose of accessibility is to ensure “...social inclusion for people with disabilities as well as others, such as older people, people in rural areas, and people in developing countries”. (Emphasis added.) Or, as Alba Villamil, user researcher from HmntyCntrd, says, plain language is not enough when designing for immigrants or people with English as Second Language (ESL).

Let’s say you have plain language and translation. However, if you have elements on your website that disrupt the user, it’s lose-lose. Large, persistent ads on some Indian newspaper sites come to my mind. I often lose the thread as I am reading on these sites when paragraphs are divided up by huge blocks of ads or distracting, garish video ads display right next to the article.

There possibly are other areas of work with which plain language intersects to enable fulfilling human experiences. Do write in if you think of any.