By Roy Jacobsen

I’ve always believed the maxim “If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” But now I find myself telling you that there’s something simple you can do that will boost your bottom line. One fundamental, uncomplicated thing that will:

• Streamline procedures and paperwork
• Improve employee productivity and moral
• Reduce training time
• Boost customer satisfaction
• Increase sales and improve your company’s position in the marketplace

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What is “it?”

“It” is using plain language. Plain language is a set of practices based on the idea that the audience—customers, business partners, or employees—should be able to understand a document the first time they read it. Think about all the documents your business produces: customer letters, employee manuals, financial disclosure documents, legal contracts and notices, or anything else, printed or electronic. All of them can be improved by following plain language guidelines.

The evidence is overwhelming: plain language can have a huge positive impact on business. Studies in businesses and government agencies have shown that plain language saves time and money, and it improves understanding. And most importantly, almost everybody prefers plain language.

Watch your Language!

Just think about the business communications you read or hear every day. This includes E-mail, presentations, whitepapers, reports, proposals, contracts, billing statements, license agreements—the list is endless. Was the message immediately clear? Or did you have to review it a few times, wading through the jargon, business-speak, and legalese, to figure out what they were trying to say? Did it have a warm, human, conversational tone? Or did it come across as something composed by the computer HAL 9000, from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey?

“Jargon, wordiness, and evasiveness are the active ingredients of modern business-speak,” according to the authors of Why Business People Speak Like Idiots. This is troubling because our ability to conduct business depends on our ability to communicate. Unclear, ineffective communication is to business what square wheels are to NASCAR.

Most people don’t use murky language deliberately. We usually fall into it because that’s what we see modeled all around us. “Everyone writes this way, so this must be how it’s done.”

Just because “everyone does it that way” doesn’t mean that you have to.

Benefits of Plain Language

Okay, plain language sounds good on the surface, but is it really that much better? Isn’t there a good reason for the traditional language of business? Well, there are many reasons why the traditional way of writing is the tradition. But “it works better” is not one of them. Researchers have recently started comparing plain language to traditional language, and in every case, plain language comes out the clear winner.

Many of the studies of the benefits of plain language examine it in one of two ways: the benefits to the company, or benefits to the reader. Let’s look at a few examples of each.

Both the United States Army and Navy have studied the effect of writing business memos in plain language, and both found that plain language is better. The Army found that people who receive memos written in plain language are twice as likely to comply with the memo on the day they receive it. The Navy found that plain language memos take 17% to 23% less time to read, with significantly greater comprehension. “Time is money” is a fundamental business axiom, and the Navy estimated that, if all memos were written in plain language, their yearly cost savings (in time saved) would range from $250 to $350 million.

The “Time = Money” equation shows up in other areas as well. In the early 90s, Federal Express (now known as FedEx) revised its operations manuals using plain language guidelines after finding that readers who used the old manuals took an average of five minutes to find information, and they found the correct information only 53% of the time. With the new manuals, the average search time was 3.6 minutes, with an 80% success rate. They estimated that this effort was worth $400,000 annually in time saved. And that doesn’t take into account the savings from employees getting the right answers the first time.

Here are more examples of plain language having a direct impact on a company’s bottom line:

• In 1991, the Allan-Bradley Company (now a division of Rockwell Automation), rewrote their computer manuals in plain language. This reduced calls to their call center from more than 50 a day to less than two a month.

• British Telecom revised their billing statements in 1997 and found that it reduced customer calls about phone bills by 25%. Furthermore, customers paid more promptly, improving cash flow and reducing collection costs.

Other studies have found similar savings, along with reduced error rates on business forms, improved retention for staff training, reduced paperwork, and increased efficiency. All of these will boost profit margins.

What about the audience? What benefits do they receive?

Some of the studies I already cited showed improved comprehension; the readers got the intended message the first time around. The Navy study, for example, found that readers understood the plain language memos better than those written in traditional “bureaucratic” language. Other studies have found this as well. For example, the Veterans Administration tested some of their form letters. Only 44% of the veterans who received the traditional versions understood them. When they rewrote them in plain language, that number rose to 89%. In addition, the average reading time went from eight minutes to six.

Researchers who have studied this have found that readers overwhelmingly prefer plain language. When the Ford Motor Company tested a plain language version of the owner’s manual for the Taurus, 85% of the respondents preferred it to the other version.

The preference for plain language carries over into specialized documents, such as financial disclosure documents and legal documents. For example, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission tested a plain language “profile prospectus” against the traditional model. Experienced investors overwhelmingly preferred the plain language version.

Joseph Kimble, a professor of legal writing at Thomas Cooley Law School in Michigan, and the author of Lifting the Fog of Legalese: Essays on Plain Language, has found that judges and attorneys prefer plain language to traditional “legalese.” Kimble points out legal language infiltrates business documents, such as contracts, licensing agreements, billing statements, and so on, even though it really isn’t necessary. “You can bet that many of those are influenced by the legal department, who won’t let this stuff get out to the public unless it’s written in legalese. And it just doesn’t have to be.” Plain language does the job more effectively.

Plain language doesn’t just help your company and your audience. It can help you in several ways as well.

First, trying to write clearly helps you think more clearly. Brian Fugere, one of the authors of Why Business People Speak Like Idiots, and a partner at Deloitte Consulting, says, “Clear language forces you to think harder about what you’re saying. A lot of what we see is the result of people not really getting clear in their own heads what they’re trying to say.” (I have found this to be true for my own writing. If my words are murky, it’s usually because I’m not sure exactly what I’m trying to say.)

It also gives you a wider audience. Fugere says, “If you start experimenting with clear language, you find that people pay attention.” He cited his own experiences as a consultant. The studies I already mentioned support that contention. People are more likely to read, and understand, messages delivered in plain language.

Studies have also shown that people who use plain language are viewed more positively. Most people think “straight talkers” are more likable, friendly, energetic, inspiring, and enthusiastic.

And the most important benefit comes back to the bottom line: People are more likely to take action when you use plain language. Plain language gets results.

Plain Language Principles

Plain language isn’t a set of rules or a list of words to use or not use. It’s a set of principles for writing to convey our ideas clearly, accurately, and economically.

• Start with your readers’ needs in mind. Tell them what they need to know, using the words they use, but don’t bog them down in extraneous details.

• Use familiar words—ones that are simple, direct, and human. Call a shovel a shovel, not a human-powered excavation implement. This doesn’t mean you can’t use specialized language or jargon. If there is a clear and well-known term that best expresses your idea, and your audience knows that term, then go ahead and use it.

• Express actions with verbs; don’t convert them into abstract nouns. Don’t utilize things, and for pity’s sake, don’t write about their utilization; use them. William Zinsser, in On Writing Well, advises us to “…remember that readers identify with people, not with abstractions like ‘profitability’ or with Latinate nouns like ‘utilization’ and ‘implementation,’ or with inert constructions in which nobody can be visualized doing something: ‘pre-feasibility studies are in the paperwork stage.’”

• Use active voice more. Write sentences that describe actors performing actions (rather than states of being). “A foolproof method for roadrunners to be captured by hungry coyotes has been developed by Acme researchers” is passive. “Acme researchers have developed a foolproof method for hungry coyotes to capture roadrunners” is active.

• Relentlessly cut unnecessary words. At this point in time is just a long-winded way of saying now or currently, and there are hundreds of other bits of baggage cluttering business communication. Not only do they waste your audience’s time, they sap your message of its power. It took only 270 words to deliver one of the most powerful speeches in American history: Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.

• Don’t be afraid to use personal pronouns. Address your reader as “you,” especially if you’re writing instructions. A sentence like “The completed form must be submitted before the application can be processed” doesn’t say who is supposed to do what. “You must complete the form and submit it to us before we can process your application” is clear and direct.

• Simplify. Break long, complex sentences into shorter, simpler ones. Aim for more short paragraphs than long ones. This doesn’t mean that you have to write in a “See *** run” style. It means you should be sure you’re not trying to cram too many ideas into a single sentence or paragraph.

• Give your document a logical structure, and make that structure visible. Divide things into short sections, with lots of headings (and subheadings, if necessary). Put an executive summary, purpose statement, or table of contents at the beginning. People will often skim a document for its key points before reading it, so make them stand out.

These ideas will get you off to a good start. There are also tools that can help. For example, if you struggle with business buzzwords, you can install Bullfighter, a free tool for Microsoft® Office Word 2003 and PowerPoint® 2003. It scans your document for offending words and offers plain language alternatives. It also calculates a readability score for your document, using the method invented by the late Dr. Rudolph Flesch, a pioneer in readability research. You can download Bullfighter from www.fightthebull.com.

(Full disclosure time: I scanned an early draft of this article with Bullfighter. My document’s “Bull Index” was 98—not quite bull-free because I had one instance of utilize—with a Flesch Readability score of 52. Bullfighter said that my writing is “mostly clear, with some unnecessarily long words and sentences. You get to the point, although with an occasional detour. Most educated readers will navigate the text with no difficulty. Longer words and sentences appear occasionally.”)

Plain language doesn’t have the cachet of the latest business fad being promoted by someone trying to push his book up the business bestseller list. But it does have reams of evidence that prove its worth to your company, your customers, and to you. And it doesn’t take an army of high-priced consultants to apply to your business, either. All it takes is the will to spend some time and effort, and the willingness to learn how to use words well.