Rules for Writing Plain English

How You Can Write Plain Language
by Just Following These 39 Steps

William D. Lutz, author of Doublespeak Defined and The New Doublspeak

Scheduled speaker at our international conference, Nov. 3-6, 2005, in Washington, D.C.

The Writing Process

Know your reader, and write with your reader's viewpoint in mind.
Organize your text:

in a logical sequence,
with informative headings, and
with a table of contents for long documents

Use short sentences
Say only what you have to say, avoiding too many messages in a single sentence, and omitting surplus words.
Keep equivalent items parallel.
Avoid unnecessary formality.
Give an overview of the main idea of the text.
List conditions separately.
Arrange your words with care.
Punctuate carefully.
Use an average of 25 words per sentence.
Put most of your messages at the subject-predicate position.
For variety or emphasis, invert your sentences.
Use the art of subordination to smooth out choppiness.
Avoid disrupting your sentences with thought-stopping gaps.
Tabulate particularly complex information.
Get rid of compound prepositions.
Rewrite the adjective, adverb, and noun clauses to other structures satisfying the same functions.
Use phrases to smooth out the choppy noun-noun modifier.
Be fair and nonsexist, but don't be stupid.

Usage

Prefer the active voice.
Use simple, "everyday" words.
Use words consistently.
Use familiar, concrete words.
Avoid multiple negatives.
Avoid nouns created from verbs.
Use action verbs; avoid the verb "to be."
Use personal pronouns.
Avoid noun strings.
Avoid whiz-deletions*.
Avoid language quirks.

Presentation of Material

Make the document attractive and designed for easy reading.
Use white space in margins and between sections.
Use ragged right margins.
Do not use all caps.
Use highlighting techniques, but don't overuse them.
Use 8 to 10 point type for text.
Avoid lines of type that are too long or too short.
Avoid strings of symbols.

*Whiz Deletions

Subordinate clauses are often introduced by such words as "which is," "who was," "that are," etc. Deleting these words (the relative pronoun and linking verb) is known as "whiz-deletion." For example:

The supervisor wants the report which was written by the Purchasing Office.

With a whiz-deletion we get:

The supervisor wants the report written by the Purchasing Office.

The whiz-deletion makes sentence 2 ambiguous. Does the supervisor want the Purchasing Office to write the report, or does she want the report that the Purchasing Office has already written? Generally, it's a good idea to avoid whiz-deletions.