That’s a working definition of Plain English from a blogpost I read recently. It’s good, isn’t it? I (and many others on LinkedIn) urge writers to use plain language in their documents but how can you learn what that means. The Plain English Campaign happens to be based in New Mills, less than 8km from where I am writing this post. It’s mission since 1979 has been to fight for crystal-clear communication and fight against gobbledygook, jargon and misleading public information.

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Even if your organisation does not have one. Here’s why. By style guide I mean a guide to the use of language in communications, especially public communications such as websites and published reports. I don’t mean the brand guidelines used by graphic designers to make sure that logos and so on are used correctly. Lots of organisations have a style guide. If yours does, you should use it. If your organisation does not have one it is no excuse for poor quality, inconsistent writing.

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These will help your writing be clearer and plainer. You will also avoid some awful consultant-speak. leverage — go with influence or use instead, unless you mean leverage in its financial sense. progress — use work on or develop or make progress. dialogue — use speak to or discuss. utilise — write use instead agenda — use plan instead. advance — use to improve or something more specific to the context (unless you happen to be writing about an army advancing).

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Putting a lot of text on a slide and reading it aloud to the audience is the number one presentation killer. Especially if you turned your back on the audience at the same time. Always remember, you are the presentation, not the slide deck. The slides are there to support what you are saying. If someone can get your whole message by reading your slides then why should they bother listening to you?

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I know the following are trivial and nitpicky but, still, they irritate me when I see or hear them. An ellipsis is three full stops in sequence; not two, or four, or ten. You can type three full stops in many text editing apps and they will be replaced by the ellipsis glyph. You can type the glyph directly using option+; in MacOS or alt+; in Windows. There should not be a space before an exclamation mark or question mark.

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Are you a good writer? Are your presentations interesting and effective? How do you know whether what you have written or presented is good or bad? Sometimes you will receive unsolicited comments from your boss or a colleague but often all you will get are some suggested edits to your draft. If done well I suppose you could learn from the edits but often there is no explanation of why the change is being made.

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Steve Jobs was interested in graphic design and calligraphy and he took that interest into the early versions of the Macintosh operating system. As a result we have computers with hundreds of pre-loaded fonts and we can all be (untrained) graphic designers. If he had not had that interest maybe all our computers would still be like typewriters with one typeface. Just because the fonts are there does not mean we should use them.

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Here is a tip to help you write a presentation. Every time you speak, you need to have something to say. I understand that when you are asked to talk about your specialist subject it is not difficult to find things to say so you might feel able to improvise on the day. But, some of the presentations you give in your job are really important. Should you really approach them with the plan of ad-libbing around some bullet points and notes?

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Over the holidays I came across an article by Jane Rosenzweig in the Harvard Business Review that happens to have been translated by HBR into this short video. If you like this video why not follow Jane Rosenzweig’s Writing Hacks on Substack.

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