2 fun ways to make your letters and leaflets easier to understand
Whatever you write for your patients or service users, whether it's letters, emails, leaflets, presentation slides, booklets or webpages, it's worth learning to make your writing as easy to understand as possible.
Here are two fun and easy shortcuts to get started with writing in plain language.
Why write in plain language?
Your appointment is on Tuesday, please read this important information before you arrive
About half of adults in the UK have low levels of literacy. So for every other person you write to, reading a broadsheet newspaper like the Times might feel uncomfortably dense and wordy like the terms & conditions that come with your new credit card.
And 1 in 6 will only be comfortable reading short amounts on familiar topics. Your service leaflet could look like a law textbook or scientific paper (even lawyers and scientists take their time over those!)
But when asked, 95% of people would rate their literacy skills as “average”. So most people aren't going to let you know they have low literacy skills or ask for simpler writing. Which is fair, because why should they? It's reasonable to expect a public service to write letters, emails, leaflets and patient resources in a way that the average person would understand.
That’s what the Plain English Campaign fight for, and they have loads of resources, training and services to help you develop your skills to write in plain language. Go and have a look, it’s probably all you need really!
But the reason for this post is that I think it can be hard to develop your writing skills when writing is just one of the many hats you wear in your role, or a hat you only wear occasionally. I know when I first heard about writing in plain language, I found it hard to remember and get into the habit when I wasn’t writing all that often. So I thought I’d share these 2 tips I found were fun and easy shortcuts.
Have a go next time you’re writing something!
How to write in plain language - 2 fun and easy tips
Catch up with a friend and learn to write like you speak
Good excuse to hang out with that friend you haven’t seen in ages!
Most of us will naturally speak more plainly than we write - so this is an exercise to help you spot the difference and learn to write in your own voice.
People with low literacy levels tend to be more used to getting information and accessing services by talking to people - and ideally our services will have that option for them. But when we do need to put something in writing, wording it more like we talk can make it a bit easier to understand.
If you don’t know what I mean by writing like you speak, this is the perfect exercise to get a feel for the difference.
Most people I’ve tried this exercise with realise they have a “writing mode” that’s weirdly hard to break out of. Like how in person you might say to a service user, “You'll need to bring this form to your appointment” but when we go to write it in a letter somehow it comes out as “Patients are required to present this form when attending an appointment.” We don’t even notice we’re doing it sometimes!
So this exercise is a good shortcut for breaking out of ‘writing mode’, and writing more like you speak.
Try this the next time you need to write something:
Pick a friend or relative who isn't familiar with the subject, and ideally not someone who works in your field either so won't be familiar with the context or professional jargon
Get together for a drink and have a nice chat (even better if there’s biscuits)
Ask if you can run something by them that you've been working on, to see if it makes sense and hear what questions they have
(Assuming they agree to it) Explain the general theme of what you want to write. I don't mean dictate or read aloud, I mean just try to get your friend to understand the overall message in the normal way you usually chat together
Answer their questions, then ask them to explain it back to you in their own words
As they do, write down what they say. And there it is. Word for word, that's your beginner's guide to writing in plainer language. You may want to polish it up, and make sure it's striking an appropriate tone, but resist the urge to swap any words for fancier ones or rearrange any sentences
The more times you do this, the more familiar you’ll get with how the wording and flow of talking is different, to be able to write in a similar style.
2. Try the Simple Writer
The Simple Writer is a fun website where you can type in (or copy & paste) what you’re writing, and it’ll point out words that aren’t in their list of the 1,000 most commonly used words.
That’s a reeeally limited amount of words (for reasons I’ll explain a bit further down the page) so it’s going to make a LOT of words red and you don’t have to change all of them. It’s not a definitive guide, I just find it a fun and easy shortcut to spotting words you could make simpler.
Then you can use the Plain English Campaign’s free A-Z of alternative words to see about switching them.
I find it really handy for catching jargon - all those words and phrases we’re so used to hearing every day at work we forget they make no sense to anyone else!
It’s linked to a book called Thing Explainer, written by the author of one of my favourite nerdy webcomics XKCD, which uses only drawings and the 1,000 most commonly used words to explain all sorts of scientific concepts.
It’s an extreme example - so I’m not suggesting you copy this style of writing exactly. But it’s great inspiration for how very complex things can be explained in very familiar words.
If you find when you try writing more plainly that it feels like you’re dumbing things down, or you just can’t explain a complex topic in simpler language, I recommend giving it a read. One of the important things about plain language is that it’s not patronising or over-simplified, it’s just easy to read and understand.
