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!

 

Top of Their (My!) Game podcast, health literacy, and finding Indian laws

 

 

 

Read the August edition of my newsletter Clear Enough here.  

I was on a podcast!

I recently spoke to Bob Milstein, host of the Top of Their Game podcast. 

"Meet Vijayalaxmi Hegde: a writer and plain language specialist, and one of the leading voices advocating for clear communication in India. 

With hundreds of languages and extraordinary cultural diversity, India demonstrates why plain language is critical to ensuring everyone can participate in the world's largest democracy. 

In this episode, Vijayalaxmi shares the state of the plain language movement in India, the push to reform legal and government communication, and how AI and international standards could shape its future. It's a fascinating conversation about language, inclusion, and the power of clarity."

 

Aparna Mittal: engaging patients with plain language-driven health literacy

When I wrote about the NHS’ plain language website, I had strongly wished for something like it in India. While that still remains an ambitious wish, I was heartened to recently discover PatientsEngage, a platform dedicated to making chronic health conditions easier to understand, and thereby, manage. It also features lived experiences of people with conditions such as cancer, arthritis, and heart disease, which makes it more relatable to other patients and their families.

I sat down with Aparna Mittal, co-founder of the platform, to understand her perspective on plain language and health literacy in the Indian context.

Vijayalaxmi Hegde (VH): How did you get started with PatientsEngage? 

Aparna Mittal (AM): I was a senior executive and business head at a company that sold CRM software to pharma companies. This gave me insight into how these companies worked with the medical community. One thing led to another and I stumbled upon the concept of patient engagement around the same time. The concept was already at least a decade old in the West, but unheard of in Asia.

I realized that for patients and their caregivers in India and other Asian countries it is not enough to end up at a Johns Hopkins or Mayo Clinic website. We needed our specific context. Also, people were looking for lived experiences. If Indians wanted advice on living with a condition, it could only be accessed from these sites that were tailored to Western contexts.

PatientsEngage came about to localize health information for people dealing with chronic conditions and for their families or caregivers. We also wanted to share their lived experiences, which help other patients and their caregivers to learn and cope. It may not be medical expertise, but it gives valuable insights into how to live with a condition 24/7. This is something you cannot get from a clinician. We started with three conditions–diabetes, cancer, and arthritis–in June 2014.

VH: What was your idea of health literacy when you started?
AM: By health literacy, we meant content that could be easily understood by a highschooler. No fancy language. Even when we edit personal voices, we don’t rewrite people’s words. We edit it for grammar and clarity, but keep their voice. This has been intentional from the start.

In the West, a lot of medical content has moved to plain language. On our site, we try to communicate as clearly as possible, but I think we still don’t meet clear English standards when it comes to the content we get from healthcare professionals. They are so used to thinking and speaking in medical terminology that they sometimes struggle to explain in layperson’s language.

VH: Were you aware of plain language when you started PatientsEngage?
AM: No, I heard of the term “plain language” only in the last five years or so. But we have always tried to hold the intention of clear communication. Interestingly, translation holds a mirror to the content. We often realize something is not clear when we try to translate the content from English to Hindi. Then we go back and see how we can better explain a term.

VH: How are plain language and health literacy relevant to a developing country like India?
AM: I came across a statistic somewhere that 95% of chronic condition management happens outside the clinical arena. And this was in the Western context where consultation times are typically longer.

In India, for many an appointment with a doctor may be more infrequent or very brief. Hence there is little possibility of a detailed understanding of the condition and how to manage it. Back home, the patient and their family must make many decisions related to managing the condition. What would be useful is for someone to explain to them in plain language or even share plain language resources that would enable them to make informed decisions and manage their condition well. 

Our goal is also to bring patients and their lived experiences into policy-making process, to get them to be a part of research design or health committees. Again, plain language is indispensable in this process. If they [patients and caregivers] are sitting on a committee and the experts use jargon, they cannot contribute effectively and do not feel included.

The term “plain language” is better than asking for something to be explained in simple language. It has a negative connotation. I like it [plain language] even better than saying, “Explain [something] to me like I am a five-year-old or as if I am your grandmother.”

We see plain language and health literacy as tools for patients and their families to gain agency. Policy makers must understand that health literacy drives better health outcomes. 

VH: How do decision makers react when you talk of plain language, patient engagement, or patient participation?
AM: It is a slow process. We are finding allies, but slowly. They believe in it and are happy to find an organisation they can work with and a growing set of trained patient advocates available to support this. This is an evolving state.

I met a patient advocate from the UK. He told me to have faith and that we are now where they were 25 years ago. That is true. But it may be much tougher for us. We are a more paternalistic society with limited resources.

I wish we could skip this learning curve though. Like India leapfrogged large scale reliance on mainframes and went straight to UNIX and Open Systems. Similarly, why can’t we take advantage of all the health literacy lessons that other countries have learned and skip the learning curve? Is that wishful thinking?

VH: How do you handle misinformation?
AM: Every story goes through an editorial process. We validate all claims and if there’s something we can’t validate we don’t run it. Someone who had vitiligo said they avoided all white food items like salt, rice, sugar, and it helped them. Now, it may be true that some of these foods can be inflammatory and hence avoiding them may have helped in some way. But the reasoning is wrong: that because they were white they had to be avoided.

We have either backed away from such stories or published them with a note to the reader when we couldn’t fact-check the claims or they didn't follow evidence-based care protocols. We have also done this with new and experimental treatments. We wait for the evidence to develop before we publish about it.

With social media and now artificial intelligence (AI), this approach becomes all the more important. The desire to simply forward stuff is so strong. Even, intelligent, educated people do not stop to check a link before passing it along.

Kishore Pariyar: the voice of clarity in banking and bureaucracy

In today's post, I am happy to profile Kishore Pariyar, a plain language hero. He has practised and advocated plain language in his roles at the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and at top positions within the government as well as at international organizations such as the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). This is no small achievement, given the entrenched ways of writing in bureaucratic and banking circles.

I present an edited email interview with Pariyar, who currently lives in Siliguri after retiring from government service. 

What does plain language mean to you? 

Plain language means writing in a simple and clear way. Laypersons are able to understand it easily without professional help. 

Sometimes sentences are written in a complex way to avoid legal risks. Because of this, people may not understand the real meaning. They may even need to pay professionals for help. Plain language solves this problem. It uses short, clear, and easy sentences. 

In a room full of people with different IQ levels and backgrounds, if even the person with the lowest level of understanding can grasp the message, then the communication has truly succeeded. To me, plain language is not about making ideas smaller. It is about making ideas reachable.

Since when have you been practising plain language? What motivated you to do so? And what, if any, were the benefits? 

I have been practising plain language for many years, though I may not have formally called it so in the beginning. During my career in regulation and supervision, I discovered that many non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) and banks were not able to comply with RBI instructions, not because they did not want to comply, but because they failed to properly understand the circulars. The language was often technical, lengthy, and difficult to interpret. For fear of making mistakes, many institutions gave vague or incomplete replies.

I also noticed that even many junior colleagues within the system were struggling to understand the language and process cases correctly. This made me realise that complexity in communication was itself becoming a barrier to effective regulation and compliance.

One incident particularly influenced me. A large number of compliances in a bank had remained pending for months, some even for more than six months. I called the compliance officers from different divisions of the bank and explained in simple language what exactly was required. The results were remarkable. Most of the pending compliances were completed within two weeks.

After that, I also started “train the trainer” sessions so that understanding would not remain limited to a few individuals. The idea was to create institutional memory so that compliance culture could continue smoothly in the future as well. This experience convinced me that plain language is not merely about simplification. It improves understanding, reduces fear, strengthens compliance, and builds confidence.

Do you think plain language is only for the layperson? Please elaborate on your answer. 

No, not at all. Even highly educated people such as doctors, engineers, business persons, and professors often struggle to understand complicated legal language. They may know English very well, but when it comes to interpreting legal documents, agreements, insurance policies, or loan papers, many still seek professional help. In fact, lawyers sometimes differ in interpreting the same law or document. This shows that the problem is not education alone. The real problem is the complexity of the language used. 

Plain language helps everyone. It makes communication clear, reduces confusion, and lowers the chance of misunderstanding. A document should communicate its meaning directly, instead of forcing people to depend on experts to understand what is written.

You have worked with the RBI, the government, and with international agencies. How would you rate their openness to plain language? 

In my experience, RBI circulars and regulatory documents are often difficult to understand, even for many employees, bankers, and officials of NBFCs. The language is usually technical, lengthy, and written with great caution to avoid legal and regulatory risks. Because of this, many regulated entities sometimes fail to understand the exact requirement and may not be able to comply. 

The situation is similar with many international agencies. In fact, they are often even more conservative in their drafting style. They try to protect themselves from legal, reputational, and policy risks. As a result, the language becomes highly formal and complex. However, I feel that awareness is now growing about the importance of plain language. Regulators and institutions are slowly realising that communication becomes more effective when people can clearly understand what is expected from them.

Why do citizens need to know what the RBI does? What does its balance sheet hold for citizens? 

Most people think RBI is only for bankers or economists. But RBI affects the daily life of every citizen. 

When prices rise too fast, RBI tries to control inflation (see my explanatory article here). When you take a home loan, vehicle loan, or fixed deposit, RBI policies affect the interest rate. When you use Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and money reaches instantly, RBI is working silently in the background. When a bank faces trouble and people still trust the banking system, that confidence comes largely because RBI supervises banks.

You only notice the electricity supply when it’s missing. Similarly, most people notice RBI only when there is inflation, banking stress, cash shortage, or payment failure.

Citizens should get to know the RBI because RBI protects the value of money, stability of banks, and trust in the financial system.

RBI’s balance sheet is not just an accounting statement (see my explanatory article here). It reflects the financial strength of the country’s central bank. It contains information on assets such as gold, foreign exchange reserves, and government securities. These act like safety cushions for the country. During difficult times like COVID, global crisis, or sudden financial panic, these assets help RBI support banks, manage liquidity, and maintain confidence in the economy. 

Like a family feels secure when savings are available during bad times, similarly, the country feels secure when RBI has strong reserves and a strong balance sheet. In short, RBI’s balance sheet assures people that:

• currency will remain trusted,
• banks will remain stable,
• digital payments will continue smoothly,
• and the economy can handle shocks.

What are your personal interests and passions? 

My personal interests revolve around learning, communication, and helping people grow. I am also passionate about emotional intelligence, mentoring, and public speaking, as they help people understand themselves and connect better with others.

I enjoy reading extensively and try to finish four books every month, though I must honestly admit I succeed only sometimes. I also enjoy writing books and articles, especially on finance, leadership, mindfulness, and human behaviour. 

Apart from this, music is very close to my heart. I enjoy playing musical instruments and often sing to myself. It helps me relax, reflect, and stay emotionally balanced. 

Zen Citizen: An effort towards clearer, bribe-free government processes

 

Last month I wrote about my volunteering project with Zen Citizen on translating the death registration form into plain English. This form gave me a chance to work closely with the founder of Zen Citizen, Vineeta Kommineni. Today's post features Vineeta and her organization and takes a look at their work from a plain language perspective. 

Founded close to two years ago, Zen Citizen is a volunteer-driven initiative that explains procedures in simple language and shares hacks/workarounds and undocumented information to help citizens independently apply for services. 

When Vineeta’s father passed away, she visited government offices many times to get documentation done. Each time she would be turned away by the staff asking for some or the other missing detail or document. The intent was clear: to wear her out enough to push her into paying a bribe. 

It didn’t really work that way. Eventually, Zen Citizen happened. While the core idea behind Zen Citizen is to empower citizens to access government services easily and on their own, the deeper goal is to fight against corruption, Vineeta told me in a telephonic interview. 

“Why should a citizen take the help of even middlemen to exercise their rights? Often the middlemen’s fee covers the bribe,” Vineeta said. 

The struggle for information is real in India. Finding out the police station, revenue district, or municipal ward your house is a part of should be just a few clicks away in this day and age. But it isn’t. One of Zen Citizen’s initial projects, Civic Compass, solved this for the residents of Bengaluru.  

Other tools Vineeta’s team have built are Kaveri Village Finder that helps you locate your property within the revenue department’s maps and Kaveri Image Resizer, a nifty way to resize photos for marriage certificate applications. These tools are workarounds for buggy government websites that frustrate and slow down users. 

Plain language in Zen Citizen’s work

“It isn’t enough to say file an affidavit. It needs to be explained in plain language. And in the absence of such information, Zen Citizen comes in. What’re the different ways in which something can be misunderstood? We must look at all that.

“Writing in plain language is not difficult. The hard part is caring enough about the user to do it,” Vineeta said.

Her current work with Seva Sindhu is to translate government forms into plain English. It’s a portal that hundreds of thousands of people visit everyday to avail of services such as birth or death certificate, police verification certificate, bus passes, and so on. “We are currently working only on the text and not doing any changes in the backend or redesigning the UX as that’s a safe, low-friction place to begin,” she informed me.

But plain language often goes deeper than text: it is about design and, as earlier noted, about empathy – aka getting into the user’s shoes. So I asked Vineeta what her approach would be if a change needs to go deeper than the text level. Take, for instance, the language field in the death registration form. Getting clarity on how to fill this field is not simply about editing the text or providing an explanatory note – see my post on this last month. This one field is enough to show that the form was not designed in a user-first way. 

To this, Vineeta replied, “We started with writing guides to help citizens navigate dysfunctional systems with less frustration. Our goal was to make the best of the situation. We did not want to fight the system or try to convince the government to change its processes—that felt like a battle for another day.” 

Fair enough. One must choose their battles and Zen Citizen has chosen theirs. Plain language is, of course, central to any work that strives to bring clarity to government processes. One does start with the text, but usually the work grows beyond it.

Translating the death registration form into plain English

 

I worked on the death registration form as a volunteer for Zen Citizen. I'd have liked to use some screenshots but the login is very buggy and I could not get into the Seva Sindhu portal once I completed the project. So, here’re some text-only highlights: 

Preferred language: This is a field at the beginning of the form. At first, it seems like an innocent enough query. But look at it more deeply and it can unhinge the entire form. By preferred language, what is the government asking? Is it the preferred language in which I want to fill the form? Or, is it the preferred language in which I want the Death Registration certificate to be provided? 

I selected English and proceeded to the subsequent fields. However, the language preference continued to haunt me. Further below in the form, it asks for the deceased’s name in Kannada. This on an English form. What happens if I am not a Kannada-speaking person? Of course, you can always use transliterating tools to input the name in Kannada, but how do I verify if it’s a correct reproduction of my name? 

The converse is even more problematic: that is, being asked to type the name in English when I have chosen Kannada as my language for the form. In English, one’s name can be spelled in so many ways. How do you verify if it’s correct if you don’t know English? This can result in a critical failure because if the certificate spells your name wrong, it’s a dud. None of the government agencies will accept it and getting it corrected is a lifetime’s work. 

Ration card: The form assumes everyone has a ration card! How did this come to be? If you don’t have a ration card, you cannot even begin with the form as the name of the deceased is automatically populated from the ration card. 

Date & time of death: The time selection menu progresses by the minute. This can be very tedious to navigate to the exact hour and minute. Providing a time selection menu like we use to set alarms in mobile phones shouldn’t be too difficult. The other question is why the time of death is relevant, unless we are investigating homicide. 

We also looked at the necessity of some of the data being collected – like the age of the deceased’s spouse. We are waiting to hear from Seva Sindhu on this and other queries. 

My learnings from this project as of now

• The form is not designed from the user’s perspective. It seems to primarily solve things for the government agency rather than the citizen.  
• It works on many assumptions -- that someone typing in English also knows how to type their name in Kannada; that everyone has a ration card; that if they cannot figure out something, they can always avail the services of a broker. 
• The form does not seem to be tested with users. Else, some of the things I highlighted here may have caught the eye of the form creators. 
• The form does not seem to take into cognizance the varied background of the users. Given that it’s a death registration form, it is applicable to everyone (!) and hence must be usable by everyone. 

The lacunae of this form are not unique to it. God knows, there are worse government forms out there. It is representative though and makes for a good beginning. Hope to be able to report positively on this project in the days to come. 

DPDP: It’s all about consent (and clarity)

 

Last month I wrote on the blog that in India we seem to be waiting for plain language to be made a compliance requirement. I couldn’t have spoken sooner. 

The Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act [pdf] lays down the rules for collection, storage, and use of personal data online. A rule under this Act requires companies to collect informed consent from their users on the data they collect and be clear about the exact purpose they are going to use it for. 

And guess what? They need to ask for consent in plain language.

“Every request for consent under the provisions of this Act or the rules made thereunder  (sic) shall be presented to the Data Principal in a clear and plain language, …” [Emphasis mine.]

(Data principal here means the person who owns the data.)

The DPDP Act is largely inspired by Europe’s General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR), though it is different in some respects, too. However, both require plain language. Here’s what the GDPR says:

“Requests for consent must be ‘clearly distinguishable from the other matters’ and presented in ‘clear and plain language’.”     

Are Indian companies equipped to create a plain language consent form? 

No. And neither are they equipped to comply with most of the Act. DPDP has fundamentally questioned the way Indian companies do business. Most of them simply do not bother about privacy. And now they are being asked to obtain consent that is “free, specific, informed, unconditional, with a clear affirmative action”. That’s a big ask. 

The Act also lets the data principal withdraw consent at any time, after which the companies can no longer use or store their data. All of this must be complied within May 2027. As one can imagine, companies are scrambling to meet the deadline. 

So my guess is that no one is bothered much about drafting a plain language consent form. I’d be happy to be proved wrong. 

None of the news articles and blog posts I skimmed mention the term “plain language”. They do talk about clarity in the consent form. But how will companies go about achieving clarity without being aware of plain language guidelines is anybody’s guess. And, if their consent forms are not in plain language, they cannot be in true compliance of the law. 

It doesn’t help that the Act itself is not in plain language. That’s a missed chance to set an example. However, some wins are that it provides helpful snippets in the margins which highlight important parts of the Act (see screenshot below). 

 It also talks about different use cases where it becomes applicable. This makes it easy to understand.  

Overall, I would celebrate the fact that India’s new digital privacy act demands clarity and actually mentions plain language, not to forget its pathbreaking use of “she” and “her".  But we need to keep moving ahead.

(Pic credit: Pexels, Mohammed Yasir https://www.pexels.com/@mohammad-yasir-3365802/.)

Clear Enough -- First edition!

Hello and welcome to the first edition of Clear Enough, India's only newsletter on all things plain language! I am excited and nervous for the same reason: I've never had a newsletter of my own before, much less on plain language! So bear with me as I unpack this edition.

Read more on LinkedIn...

Why India's Legal System May Finally Be Moving Beyond Legalese

I am linking here to my article published in the Frontline magazine on the Bar Council of India's move to include plain language drafting in law school curriculum. This is an important step towards clarity and I dare say it's an important article, too. It sums up the plain language journey so far in India and discusses the challenges to plain language drafting and the way ahead. 

I spoke to Joe Kimble for this article -- thank you, Joe! I also thank the other interviewees, Kishore Pariyar and Rohit Sharma.  

The article is paywalled. If you'd like to read it, please get in touch using the contact form on the right and I'll send you a copy. 

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. 

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.

Why do we write like this?!

 

This is an excerpt from the letter written by the Karnataka Forest Department to the municipality of Sirsi – my nearby town. The document was obtained through a Right to Information (RTI) application.

And here's the background: Some trees were marked to be cut down on a street in Sirsi. A few of us started asking questions to the municipality and the forest department. We were passed from one to the other until we were told that the forest department knew nothing about the decision to cut these trees down. As the trees were on municipal property, it was the municipality’s decision to do so.

A friend filed the RTI application and received this document. As it shows, the forest department knew very well about the proposed tree cutting. It has even made arrangements for the timber to be carried to its depot.

While the double-speak is one part of the issue, what caught my eye, or shall I say, jammed my eye, is this gargantuan sentence-paragraph made up of 60 words! Why write like this? Isn't it tiring to write, let alone read?

Perhaps the simplest and the most necessary first step in plain language translation is to break down monster paragraphs like these into human sentences.

The more I think about why we write like this, it seems to me there's an implied understanding that it's not really written to be understood. It's not written to express meaning. It is simply carried out as a chore. The human need to communicate has long gone missing. This is mostly always true of government communication, aka bureaucratese, but we see such examples all around us, all too often.

Have you come across bureaucratese or officialese recently? I can't say I'll be happy to know, but feel free to vent.

Plain language in India – An update

I wrote about the status of plain language in India some time ago. This is an update to that post.

>> In March this year, the then Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud asked judges to write judgments “in a language comprehensible to the common people”. I wish I had a link available to the full text of his speech, but I don’t. This is perhaps the most important call for plain language till date in India. 

>> Vidhi updated its manual for legal drafting and renamed it SARAL. “The SARAL Manual builds on the work of the 2017 manual and intends to compile learnings from the past five years to develop a more comprehensive, holistic approach toward legal drafting,” it says. SARAL is open to public feedback. I have given them mine. You can give yours too. 

>> Earlier this year, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) issued guidelines for the draft offer document to be in clear language. The draft offer document is submitted by a company to SEBI before an initial public offering (IPO). 

If the guidelines are not followed, SEBI says, it may return the document to the company.

>> In "Gauging Linguistic Complexity of Regulatory Communication: A Case Study for India" published in its April bulletin, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) used readability indicators to look at the language of banking regulations. It concluded that "most circulars require at least graduate level education, which is generally the education level of commercial bank employees." 

While this step from the RBI is welcome, the case study stops at assessing internal banking content. The next move has to be to look at the complexity of the language of the forms, contracts, agreements and other documents that banks present to their customers.  

>> We now have a LinkedIn group for plain language in India, blessed by PLAIN. 

Louder and clearer, please?

There has been a flurry of articles on plain language, mostly focused on its use in law. I came upon appeals for a plain language act by law students here and here. The term plain language is now heard more often in India than ever before. Jobs too are opening up in plain language, though mostly for plain-language summary writers. 

While these are good developments in themselves, we now have to step it up and make sure that it is not mere noise. We need to take substantial steps towards actually adopting plain language. 

I say this because some of the appeals, articles, or guidelines for plain language that I have mentioned here are themselves not plain. So it leaves me in doubt if the authors understand what it is to speak clearly. However, I will park these misgivings of mine for now and hope that we can keep working towards more clarity. 

Plain language and design rethink: UIDAI

This post is about how the UIDAI website can be more human-centric using plain language (PL) and design principles. This is not a comprehensive critique. I have picked eight examples to show how these principles can make life easier for the site’s users.

I am happy to be publishing this post just a couple of days before International Plain Language Day. I hope we can pick up the momentum here in India on writing more clearly and humanly.

The Universal Identification Authority of India is a government agency responsible for issuing citizens the Aadhaar card / number. This number is unique to each individual and is key in accessing governmental services. It is also a highly preferred document to open your bank account, rent a house, get a gas connection – in short, to live your life in India.

#1 Avoid wordiness.

Aadhaar Mitra, the bot, that pops up on the home page says:

“Welcome to Aadhaar!

Hi, I am your Aadhaar Mitra.

How May I Help you!!

Ask me anything about Aadhaar!”


It could have simply said, “Hi, I am your Aadhaar Mitra. How may I help you?”

Using fewer words saves everyone’s time. A chat bot’s messages have no business being wordy, as it must cater to immediate requests from users.

#2 Use lists when talking about a number of things.

Identity and address proof documents mentioned on this page can be better presented with a list and sub-heads:


What to submit?

For proof of identity and address:

• Ration card

• Voter identity card

• Government-issued identity card/certificate having address

• Indian Passport

For proof of identity:

• PAN card

• Driving license

• Secondary or Senior School mark sheet/ School leaving certificate having photograph

• Government-issued identity card/ certificate

For proof of address:

• Electricity/water/gas bill (last 3 months)

• Bank / Post Office passbook

• Rent/ lease/ leave & license agreement

#3. Use “you” and other pronouns. Speak directly.

And

#4: Cut the bloat.

Below is the introductory paragraph on the grievance and feedback page and a possible rewrite. The original paragraph prefaces and rambles. I have implemented two important PL principles in this example: use pronouns like you would in a conversation with human beings and eliminate unnecessary words.

Strangely, it seems like as if this page is only for grievances related to the update process.

Original
Aadhaar, as the most commonly used digital identity, is used to avail of numerous subsidies, benefits and services. In view of the same, for maintaining the accuracy of the Aadhaar database, UIDAI had initiated an exercise for update of documents and Aadhaar information. In the course of activities undertaken to keep the Aadhaar database updated, intimations are issued from time to time to Aadhaar number holders. In this connection, it is clarified that no Aadhaar number has been cancelled. In case any Aadhaar number holder has any grievance in this regard, they may submit their feedback here. Any such grievance will be duly addressed.

Rewritten in plain language
To maintain the accuracy of your Aadhaar information, we ask you to update your documents from time to time. We wish to clarify that we have not cancelled any Aadhaar number in the updating process.

If you have a complaint about your Aadhaar update, please fill in the form here.

In the rewrite, I have:

• Used pronouns such as “you” and “we”. This speaks directly to the user and makes it an interaction between human beings. It invokes trust, is shorter, and easier to understand than the distant-sounding passive phrases which eliminate the need to use a pronoun.

• Deleted prefacing sentences, such as the first one in the original paragraph.

• Deleted phrases like “In view of the same”, “in this connection”, and “in this regard” which merely add flab and have no real purpose.

• Deleted repetitive information couched in different words. The phrase “In the course of activities undertaken to keep the Aadhaar database updated” refers to what has already been stated in the previous sentence.

• Tightened up the copy: Use “if” instead of “in case”.

• Got rid of officialese such as “duly addressed”. Scratch that. I got rid of all of the last sentence. If I fill in a grievance form, I obviously expect it to be addressed.

#5. Use common and accurate words.

“Demographics” is a word that comes up often on the site. Demographic refers to anything related to population or the different groups in it. When the UIDAI site says “Update demographics data”, it simply means “Update your data”.

While “demographics” is not a common word that most people visiting the UIDAI site can easily understand, it is not even the correct word in this context. Using inaccurate words has a further repercussion when you bring in machine translation (MT). In the machine-translated Kannada version of the website, demographics becomes ಜನಸಂಖ್ಯಾ ಮಾಹಿತಿ, which is the literal translation of the word. It means population information. Not helpful.

Same goes for the word “grievance”. “Complaint” is a more commonplace word.

#6. Create a glossary.

Following from the last point, a glossary or a terminology database is necessary for terms used on the website. The glossary must state the meaning of the term in the context of the website. This can be used to train MT engines and can serve as a reference for professional translators as well.

A glossary can help avoid the many mistakes that can crop up with translation down the line and the ensuing need for corrections. While this is not a strictly plain language recommendation, it is conducive to it.

And while we are on the subject of MT, the disclaimer about MT accuracy needs to be visible when someone opens the translated versions of the website. It’s currently at the very bottom of the main site.

#7. Keep accessibility in mind.

The UIDAI site uses a carousel to highlight new features. It moves pretty fast from slide to slide. I usually find it hard to read from carousels and am constantly trying to keep up. It isn’t just me though.

The W3C (Web Accessibility Initiative) has this to say about carousels:

“Carousels are disputed from a usability perspective because their content can be hard to discover.”

And

“For any moving, blinking or scrolling information that (1) starts automatically, (2) lasts more than five seconds, and (3) is presented in parallel with other content, there is [must be] a mechanism for the user to pause, stop, or hide it...”

(Text in square brackets is mine.)

Carousels make it distracting for people with difficulties reading or focusing. They also don’t seem to take into account the fact that people read at different speeds. We have data to show that carousels are ignored by most users: only 1% interact with a carousel at all, and 89% of them only with the first slide.

When they must be used, carousels must have a pause button. The carousel on the UIDAI site does have a pause button, but is hard to find as it’s right in the middle of the slide and I missed it on my initial visits. It didn't seem to work either when I clicked it and the carousel kept playing.

Carousels do help in packing a lot of information in a smaller space. But a government website is better off helping citizens accomplish their objective, rather than confuse or distract them in an effort to save space.

The good news, however, is that carousels are missing from the subdomains of the site.

The UIDAI website carries a certification stamp from the Guidelines for Indian Government Websites and Apps (GIGW). These guidelines quote from the very same W3C guideline on carousels in Section 5.2.25. Yet, the message seems to be lost.

#8. Clear the clutter.

The whole set of links under the About Aadhaar button can be moved off the main navigation. Same goes for the Ecosystem links. These are obviously not for the lay user, but for the people or agencies who work for UIDAI or for media personnel who seek additional information.



As I said before, this is not a comprehensive clarity audit. What did you notice that can be improved? Share in the comments.

Plain language in India: Developments, challenges, and the way ahead

I first heard about plain language in my journalism college from my professor, Jyoti Sanyal. He had worked long years at The Statesman where he wrote what is still perhaps the country’s only newspaper stylebook, Write it Right. Most Indian newspapers only have stylesheets.

Sanyal later published the gist of the stylebook in the form of a book, Indlish.

He went on to found Clear English India in Kolkata, an organization committed to furthering the cause of plain language. This was in 2006.

Clear English India (CEI) was formed with the help of a grant Sanyal received from Martin Cutts of the Plain Language Commission. CEI worked with one of the leading private sector banks of the country to simplify its text and customer forms. We were, of course, asked to stay off the legal disclaimer text. It was a battle half lost that way, yet we soldiered on. Sanyal designed and ran some training workshops in plain language for the bank’s staff.

The bank was our star and sole client for nearly 2.5 years. However, despite our many efforts, we got no breakthroughs elsewhere.

I worked with Sanyal at CEI for as long as he was alive. After he passed away in 2008, the organization didn’t last much longer.

And that was the last I heard about any plain language venture in India. Sanyal had mentioned that there were a couple of other individuals in India who were familiar with the concept and had tried to do something about it. But that was it. As far as I know, there was no other concerted effort in India to bring plain language to the people.

Personally, plain language as a career option simply folded up with Sanyal’s death and the closing of CEI. I moved on to other writing jobs.

A couple of years ago, I resumed my plain language career. I decided to investigate the developments in plain language in India. Here’s what I found out:

Plain language developments in India

Jyoti Sagar, founder of one the top legal firms in India and Clarity member, has been an advocate of plain legal drafting. In an article for The Wire, he says, “...the idea of moving to a more contemporary style of simple language has not been explored [in India]. The same applies to our commercial contracts and documents.”

Sandeep Dave was one of the people Jyoti Sanyal was in touch with or had heard of when he floated CEI. Dave, a lawyer, was Clarity’s India representative in the early 2000s’. He used to maintain the Global Law Review, which focused on “India law and international resources,” according to this website. But the link to Global Law Review doesn’t work any more.

The Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy created a Manual on Plain Language Drafting [pdf] in 2017. The manual provides guidelines on legislative drafting by using examples from Indian laws. It not only talks about jargon and obsolete words to avoid, but also comments on how the very structure of the bill can be made more reader-friendly.

Nyaaya was incubated at Vidhi. It offers “simple, actionable, recallable and authoritative legal information to young Indians”. Plain language is not on the explicit agenda of the organization, but explaining Indian laws is. The explainers are available in English, Hindi and Kannada.

Rajeev Satav, a member of Parliament, moved a plain language bill in 2018. The bill called for the setting up of a drafting agency, which would, “...eliminate any ambiguity or confusion by clearly clarifying the intended meaning of each law.”

The bill further said, “The principle of Rule of Law presupposes that those who are affected by a law should be in a position to ascertain its meaning and effect. Therefore, plain language drafting is the need of the hour to facilitate strengthening the rule of law and ensure better accessibility & participation of the citizens of the country.”

Unfortunately, Satav recently died of Covid.

Last year Subhash Vijayran, a lawyer in Delhi, filed a public interest litigation (PIL) at the Supreme Court. He asked the Supreme Court to make the use of plain language mandatory in the drafting of laws. In his petition, he said, “The writing of most lawyers is: (1) wordy, (2) unclear, (3) pompous and (4) dull.” One of the things he talked about was the introduction of a plain language drafting course for law students.

It seems he got the attention of the Supreme Court as well as its sympathy. “You should also say, if this isn’t done, people will stop reading the laws and judgements,” Vijayran recalls the bench telling him. The judges then issued a notice to the government. The case was to be heard in December 2020. No update on the hearing is available online.

The Supreme Court could not understand a judgement by the Himachal Pradesh High Court. It sent it back to the High Court for re-drafting for clarity. Now that is something, isn’t it, for the judges to get some of their own medicine?

Justice Yathindra Singh, a retired Chief Justice of the Chhattisgarh High Court, wrote an article on “Cultivating plain language in law”. He talks of how he was fascinated by the “complicated and obscure language of the legal world” as a young lawyer. But he eventually got over it and realized that “Good legal writing does not have to sound as [if it was] written by a lawyer.”

Niharika Bapna, who currently works as a law clerk at Tribunals Ontario, has written a research paper titled Plain Language Drafting – A Study of the Laws of India (2009-2017). She shared the paper with me some time ago. But I cannot quote from it as it’s not available in the public domain.

The Society of Indian Law Firms has reportedly been training its members in plain English. The National Judicial Academy, too, reportedly offers courses for judges on ways to make judgements easy and accessible. Reportedly, because I did not find links to any such programs by these institutions.

These are some of the developments that I have been able to find based on online searches. If there are more, please mail me [vijayalaxmiDOThegdeATgmailDOTcom] about it and I’d be happy to add them here.

Update on 27 November 2021: 

N. Watson Solomon, whose pen name is Nirmaldasan, is the creator of the Strain Index, a formula for measuring the readability of texts. He maintains a weblog Readability Monitor to keep track of plain language: He has authored a chapter in Plain Language In Plain English (2010).

Challenges for plain language in India

First off, the novelty of the idea. Plain language is still largely unheard of in India. Among the developments I listed above, you’ll notice that most of them have happened in the last couple of years. It could be that plain language is getting some traction, but you can’t be sure in the absence of concrete action.

However, that there is no active, overt demand for plain language doesn’t imply that people in India love gobbledygook. But the realization that plain language is actually our right is yet to catch on.

Secondly, the Victorian era legacy. English entered India in the Victorian era through the newly-established schools and colleges. It was a particularly unfortunate time for the language, with roundabout ways of talking and bloated words being in fashion then. In India, the babus and clerks also used a very servile English.

Sanyal used to say that our tendency to listen along to incomprehensible Sanskrit mantras without ever stopping to think and ask about the meaning goes well with the culture of gobbledygook.

Thirdly, entrenched lobbies. Any attempt to bring in plain language might immediately make some groups insecure. Lawyers come to mind first, but I can also see companies and bureaucrats digging their heels in.

And fourthly, no clue how to go about it. Even if someone wanted to write clearly, they wouldn’t know where to begin and whom to turn to. Of course, these are the least of our troubles, as plain language resources do exist in the public domain. It’s just that the right connections need to be made.

Way ahead?

It’s definitely uphill. But if you look at the history of the plain language movement elsewhere in the world, it was no different.

To my mind, some of the initial steps we could take to bring about plain language in India are:

Form an informal/formal advocacy group. It can be a LinkedIn group or some other online forum which we can quickly put together. We can use this space to meet regularly, float ideas, discuss challenges, and draw inspiration.

Learn from plain language movements around the world. It would particularly help if we could learn from other developing countries.

Draw inspiration from our history. The Bhakti movement that surged around the 12th century AD was a definite rejection of unintelligible gibberish associated with rituals and Sanskrit mantras and a move towards the local, plain language.

The seer-leaders of the Bhakti movement chose to speak and write songs in Kannada, Marathi, Bangla, Sindhi, and other regional languages. A close look at the Bhakti movement could be very inspiring. If we ever had a plain language movement in India, it was this.

Connect plain language to the Right to Information (RTI) Act. For, what use is information if you cannot understand it? Plain language gives teeth to RTI, because then people can take quick action based on the information they access under this Act.


I hope I’ll be able to update the Developments section of this article frequently in the days to come. And please share your thoughts on how we can further the cause of plain language in India.