Plain language webinar for Indian Copyeditrors' Forum

I post here a recording of an introductory webinar on plain language that I did for ICF. It provides a definition of plain language, the history and context in India, and guidelines on how to write plainly with some examples. Do view and share!

 

Plain language guideline 4: Using vigorous verbs

One of the beauties of the English language is its ability to transform most nouns into verbs. These noun-turned-verbs are vigorous and can bring the text alive. It is also equally true that one of the ways to write poorly is to do just the opposite: make nouns of perfectly sound verbs. 

Here’s an example from Martin Cutts’ Oxford Guide to Plain English: 

“The team’s role is to perform problem definition and resolution.”

The writer created nouns from the verbs define and resolve. If these were to revert to their verb forms, the sentence could read thus:

“The team’s role is to define and resolve problems.”

Apart from flowing well, sentences are shorter when verbs are used as verbs --  nine words in the rewrite versus 10 in the original. Yes, that’s just one word less, but visually it makes a huge difference when you drop all the “ition”s. 

In Indian languages, though, it doesn’t sound odd if you were to nominalize – the tendency to noun-ify the verbs. In fact, it’s inherent in all Indian languages. 

Jyoti Sanyal, the author of Indlish and the pioneer of plain language in India, intimately understood these mannerisms and came up with the “mother tongue, other tongue” approach to help Indians communicate better in English. He said, “Consider the expression: ‘His mother still mothers him.’ It would be impossible to render that expression into any Indian language with such economy. Indian languages operate on the noun. The noun is retained rigidly as a noun, and a do/doing word is placed after it to arrive at action.”

The bane of most legal, academic, and, in India even journalistic writing, seems to be this systematic weakening of verbs. Instead, let verbs be. If possible, create a verb from a noun and enliven your text. Nominalization can end up in noun strings that only serve to muddle the reader or put them to sleep.

Pic credit: Photo by Mo Saeed: https://www.pexels.com/photo/sporty-female-playing-tennis-on-court-5409085/

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.  

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.