It’s tempting to write what you need to say. That’s good, if you’re writing a book or a poem. That’s bad, if you’re writing a web page or any document that is supposed to be helpful or even useful to the public.

Here’s an extreme example from the small web site of Pestoff Animal Control Products.

What 99% of readers want from the home page is, I presume, information about Pestoff products and an easy way to buy them. Reasonable?

Instead, this is what we read on the home page.

Thank you for visiting us.

Our site is dedicated to informing you about our highly successful products, services, distributors and clients. This is the launch page for taking you around our site and providing you with information about our business.

Use the buttons on the left to find out about our company, its products and services, its clients and our collective achievements.

You can also click on the link buttons in text at the bottom of each page or click on the button/bars within the text below to obtain specific information.

We are proud to hold ISO 9001/2000 accreditation. Click on the logo opposite to view our ISO9001/2000 certification details as issued by Bureau Veritas Quality International.

Fascinating? Just what you needed to know? Thought not.

Think what the reader needs to know. Then write what the reader needs to know.

Pestoff.co.nz — Let’s hope this inspires them to upgrade their web site. Don’t let’s be too scornful, either: any of us could fall into the same trap.

Plain, yes. Boring, no. Barbarous, never.

2010 is a big George Orwell year: the 60th anniversary of his death occurred in January.

John Rossi summarises Orwell’s life work in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

George Orwell’s advice on writing style is recycled over and over again, year after year, all over the world… for a very good reason: it is timeless.

It’s hard to beat Orwell’s clear, simple, focused tips, expressed in a style both simple and civilised.

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech that you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word when a short word will do.
3. If it is possible to cut out a word, always cut it out.
4. Use the active rather than passive voice.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

Whenever possible, use common words. Words that nearly every adult is likely to understand. Words that don’t require a trip to the dictionary.

Your aim in all business and professional writing is to get your message across quickly and clearly. Using common words is a plain language trick that really helps. It’s a simple way to spruce up your writing, making it more concise and more readable.

You’ll find hundreds of examples, once you start looking. Here are a few for starters:

• not in lieu of but instead of
• not subsequent to but after
• not under the provisions of but under.

Experiment. Wouldn’t your writing be clearer if you used:

• not transformation but change
• not outcomes but results
• not prioritized but most important
• not stakeholder but you or —well, stop and think who you really mean!

200 examples of unnecessarily complicated words, and alternatives, were published by the Local Government Association (UK) in March 2009.

Many words have optional spellings: several versions are correct. Which one will you use?

Online or on-line? web or Web? realise or realize?

In such cases, consistency rules. Your personal preference is irrelevant.

Somewhere in your (client’s) organisation is an inhouse Style Guide. It’s a publication that nobody reads except the people in Corporate Communications. Most likely you’ll find a copy there, although someone did give you one when you were first engaged.

Listed there (or should be) are the definitive spellings you must use. Otherwise chaos rules as everyone makes it up as they go along.

What’s wrong with chaos? Well, it unsettles your readers, and tortures you, the writer, with numerous fiddly little choices.

Oh dear, what if you can’t find a Style Guide and nobody seems to care anyway? Use the dictionary approved by Corporate Communications… and in extremis, use your own dictionary.

This plain language writing tip needs no explanation: the meaning is obvious. The reason is pretty obvious too. And yet it bears constant repetition, because people forget.

In a business or government office, meaningless jargon may become so common that many otherwise normal, healthy, intelligent people think it makes sense. If you work in certain environments, you bathe in gobbledegook as it streams out of memos, reports, policy, procedures, presentations and even press releases. You yourself start writing the same jargon, confident it’s the right way to go.

And you start to participate in a group hallucination. You get this extraordinary illusion that ordinary people can understand what you are saying. (Or care.)

Here’s a classic example, the first two paragraphs on a government web page:

Scion places a high emphasis on developing strategic partnerships to build stronger science capability and ensure the delivery of worthwhile outcomes.

We have developed a diverse range of relationships with other research organisations, industry groups, and commercial businesses, both nationally and internationally, to greatly expand the potential of science-related opportunities.

Flesch-Kincaid readability score: zero. That means virtually no adult reader will be able to understand it easily.

What does the author really mean, in plain language? We can figure that out. But in the end, is it worth saying?

First figure out what you really mean, then say that. If it’s worth saying, say it in plain language. If it’s not worth saying, don’t bother.

Scion: Key Working Relationships

Some things never change.

I’ve just found this cartoon, which is about a million years old. Well, to be more precise, it is pretty old. I used to show it in workshops for writers at least 15 years ago. Here’s how antique it is: I drew the original cartoon on a “transparency”.

What in the name of all things pointy is a “transparency”? you young things are wondering.

Well, my chickens, long ago in the olden days, the 459th caveman had not yet invented PowerPoint. So we trainers and teachers wrote and drew our words of wisdom on pieces of transparent plastic. We placed these pieces of plastic on a glass surface, plugged in a cord, turned on the electricity and behold, the words were displayed on a screen. Or a wall. Usually crooked. But sometimes legible.

Ah, those were the days. Not.

Way back then in the dark ages, Word had already invented Styles. And writers were consistently, perversely, ignorantly ignoring Styles. To be fair, nobody ever told them about Styles. Maybe nobody has told you. If not, let me do the honours.

Styles is not about tinkering with the appearance of every word, making it up as you go alone. Styles is about consistent formatting.

Styles enables you to tag any piece of text by its function, e.g.

• title
• chapter heading
• headline 1
• author
• quote
• page number
• table of contents
• address

If the text is correctly tagged, you can ensure that every chapter heading (to take one example) is formatted the same and therefore looks exactly the same.

Styles was like a primitive, prophetic glimpse of XHTML. It’s still hugely powerful, especially for long documents. Easy as pie for a writer to use. Saves days of work later on.

Of course most other word processors now have a Styles tool also: it’s not just MS Word.

Writer, please write. Let the designers design.

And save the sanity of several people in the production line (including yourself) by using Styles as you go.

If you didn’t know this before, you will thank me later.

Your web content (and everything else you write for business) is treated as data. Therefore:

• Write headlines and page titles that describe the document or give its key message.
• Write a summary of the document straight after the headline.
• In link-text, put key information about the page people will jump to (not “Click here”).

Virtually every time you write a business or professional document, it exists in electronic form. That electronic document is electronically labelled and stored in various electronic ways—not in a metal filing cabinet. And it will be treated as data, so that other people can find the document when they search.

The internet is hyperspace, with multiple dimensions, and that’s where your document lives.

• Entire web pages are lump of data that can be re-used in many places.
• Headlines and summaries are crucial bits of data that can appear in many places.
• Other data that’s obviously re-usable: contact details, share prices, corporate information, news items, photographs, slides, information… I could go on all day.

That data can be used and found in 1,000 places simultaneously (not just on the original piece of paper). For example, it could pop up in Google search results, on other web sites, in spreadsheets and PDFs, in Google Docs, online newspapers, on FaceBook and Twitter.

Writers, these fundamental facts about modern communication mean we need to write in a particular way. Picture your words in hyerspace—or at least in a different context: they should still make sense.

Do you use a WYSIWYG for writing web content? That’s short for What You See Is What You Get.

You’ll be tempted to use those magic buttons that change the appearance of your text. Text decoration buttons make the text on your web page bigger, smaller, in a different colour, font or size.

Examples of WYSIWYG text-decoration buttons:
 


These buttons are a bad way to decorate the words you’re writing. Why? Because if you change the appearance of text on a whim, the page will start to look messy. Even worse, it will look different from other pages on the web site.

The web site should have a recognisable look and feel. For instance, all level 1 headlines will be a particular colour and size.

Just making text bold does not turn it into a headline. Instead, write text in the proper field for headlines. Then it will look like a headline and act like a headline.

Page design is the job of designers. If you’re writing text for a web site, keep things very simple.

P.S. Vote in our poll: what new online courses do you want? Free course to one entrant.

How do you know when its needs an apostrophe? This is one of the commonest errors — but you can get this right!

Here’s a new way to remember the difference.

Its and it’s belong to two different families. One family has apostrophes, the other one doesn’t.

Apostrophe family: I’m, you’re, he’s, she’s, it’s, we’re, they’re.
Non-apostrophe family: my, your, his, her, its, our, their.

To check whether an apostrophe is needed, run through the family tree.

• He’s fine. She’s fine. It’s fine. (All need an apostrophe.)
• His hat. Her hat. Its hat. (No apostrophe.)

P.S. Vote in our poll: what new online courses do you want? Free course to one entrant.

If you want to communicate clearly, use positive language. This is a basic guideline for writing plain language.

Negative language is inherently difficult to use because it has:
• conceptual difficulties (you may be writing about something nonexistent)
• psychological difficulties (negative language makes people feel bad)
• cultural implications (negativity can damage international business relationships).

Be especially careful to avoid using:
• two or more negatives in one sentence
• negative language in forms (application forms etc.)
• ‘not only… but also’
• negative questions.

Negative words:
no, not, won’t, never, nowhere, never, nothing, nobody, no-one etc.

Negative bits of words:
un-, de-, dis-, non-, in-, contra-, counter-. anti-, -less.

Words with negative connotations or complications:
however, except, unless, only if, despite, default, remove, cancel, unfortunately, hesitate, refuse, withdraw, error, loss, poor

NEGATIVE Please do not hesitate to call me.
POSITIVE Please call me.

UNCLEAR (NEGATIVE) Under no circumstances must this be used [except] in the case of a fire.
CLEAR (POSITIVE) Use this fire hose if you discover a fire.

UNCLEAR (DOUBLE NEGATIVE) Do you agree that the number of police should not fall below the number employed nationally as at 31 January 1997?
CLEAR (POSITIVE) Do you agree that the number of police officers employed nationally should be at least 8000?

Firehose image by Miraz Jordan, Knowit