Writing

Plain
English
The Securities
& Exchange
Commission’s
Handbook on
Plain English

Preface by Warren Buffett,

the world’s greatest investor
The Three Writer’s Questions

1. Why am I writing this document?

= What’s my key message?

2. Why should my audience read it?

= WiiFM, “What’s in it for me?”
WiifY, “What’s in it for you?”

3. What do I want the reader to do?

= What is my action statement?
The Curse of Knowledge
“The main cause of incomprehensible prose is the difficulty of imagining
what it’s like for someone else not to know something that you know.”
Steven Pinker, experimental psychologist, Harvard University
professor. He is one of the world’s foremost writers on
language, mind, and human nature

Quotation taken from his book, The Sense of Style, p. 57

“…the curse of knowledge is a pervasive

drag on the strivings of humanity, on a par
with corruption, disease and entropy.” p. 62

Entropy = a gradual decline into disorder

WEASEL WORDS: Watch out for unnecessary filler words
that clutter and bloat your sentences.
Example: “It is by all the means necessary that you should vacate
the premises right away.” (= Please leave!)
Weasel words, complicated vocabulary, long sentences and
jargon lead to ...

GOBBLEDYGOOK
Language that is meaningless or
made unintelligible by many abstruse,
technical-sounding terms;. Nonsense.
GOBBLEDYGOOK EXAMPLE:

“High-quality learning environments are a necessary

precondition for facilitation and enhancement of the
ongoing learning process.” (16 words)

= To get a quality education, children

need well-equipped schools with
creative, passionate teachers. (13 words)
Real Life Gobbledygook
“We found the initial creative process is complex, owing to
the non-linear, branching structure of interactive multimedia,
the need to comply with both visible and invisible formats of
the College of Health Disciplines’ Pain Management modules
(which took two years to develop) and the circularity of
interdependencies: process constraints force changes in
content, while content revisions require changes in process.
For example, staff of the BC Patient Safety and Quality
Council said the single most important change in behaviour
needed by frontline healthcare workers is embedding the
Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) Cycle in daily work. Therefore, the
4 main units of the multimedia package were structured as
Studies, Actors, Plans and things clinicians should do. This was
then adapted to CHD’s format for modules.”
Source: A medical doctor who is also a UBC professor
What causes gobbledygook?

Insufficient planning
and prewriting COMPLETING
25%

Wanting to give the PLANNING

impression we are 50%
exceedingly clever WRITING
25%
 Gobbledygook Solution
Plain English
Plain English is language that the
intended audience can
understand and act upon the
first time they read it.

Source: The Plain English Campaign: http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/

(2009)
CREATING EFFECTIVE SENTENCES

Sentences come in four basic varieties:

1. Simple
2. Compound
3. Complex
4. Compound-Complex
1. SIMPLE SENTENCES

Simple sentences have one main clause: a

single subject and a single predicate.

“Profits increased markedly over

the past year.”
2. COMPOUND SENTENCES
• Have two main clauses that express two or more
independent, but related, thoughts of equal
importance.

• Are joined together by coordinating conjunctions:

for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so

• In plain English: a compound sentence is essentially a

merger of two or more simple sentences.

“Wage rates have declined by five percent,

and employee turnover has been high.”
3. COMPLEX SENTENCES
Express one main thought (the main clause) AND
one or more subordinate thoughts (dependent
clauses) related to it, often separated by a comma.

“Although you may question Gerald’s

conclusions, you must admit that his
research is thorough.”

Dependent (or subordinate) clause = “Although you may

question Gerald’s conclusions, …”

Main clause: “You must admit that his research is thorough.”

4. COMPOUND-COMPLEX SENTENCE:

Has two main clauses, at least one of which

contains a dependent clause.

“Profits have increased in the past year,

and although you may question Gerald’s
conclusions, you must admit that his
research is thorough.”
 Why do we care
• We care because all of you are already using
these four sentence types and don’t realize it!

• If you learn to recognize them and understand

?
how and when to use them, your writing skills
will grow enormously.
LANGUAGE THAT FLOWS
To be interesting and readable, documents need a variety of
shorter and longer sentences.
This creates a rhythm and helps emphasize key points.
On average, business writing sentences should be
around 15-18 words long.

Short: Up to about 15 words

(= simple sentences)
Medium: 15-25 words
(= mainly compound sentences)
Long: 25 words and more
(= complex & compound-complex sentences)