Tips, news and views from Green Light Copywriting

Taking the pain out of plain 14 May 2009

I’ve been part of the Nottinghamshire Plain Language Group for about five years. We don’t go around firmly speaking our minds about anything we can think of (well, not all the time). But we do make sure information produced by the council is clear and user friendly. We review things like brochures and letters and give our advice on how to make them work better for their audience. It’s a kind of handy second/third/fourth opinion for the people producing the resources.

It all sounds a bit serious, but there are few things better (if you’re strange about words like me) than translating jargon into something a human being might say. And knowing it might make life a little bit easier for someone out there. There’s plenty to read on translating copy into Plain Language, but these are the things I keep in mind when I’m writing.

Plain=Simplified: Less is most definitely more. That’s it.

Plain=Clarified: Leave the details till later (or drop the excess info baggage completely, if you can). Reduce the message to its clearest form with a minimalist approach to copy.

Plain=Amplified: Is the purpose of the information obvious? Can you see the point of it as soon as you pick it up and look at it?

That’s all. Nice and simple, really.