Alumbrados – The Illuminated

We need to write in plain English to be understood. In what I just said, let me ask you, WHO is going to understand? And WHO is going to be understood? If I had said rather we need to write in plain English for people to understand us - we know straight away. For readers to understand us.

There are a few basic tips I would like to tell you about that can improve your writing and keep people interested in what you have to say because what you say is put in the simplest language and you do not lose people midway, like I just have, because my sentence was too long.

RULE 1 – Sentence length must be a maximum of 20 words. Then full stop. If longer, find a way to break it, or else you lose your readers. The average length should be 15 words. This means you must use short 10-word sentences a lot. Even 5-word and 2-word sentences. The best blogs do this. Its punchy.

RULE 2: – Paragraph length must be 4 to 5 sentences long. Long paragraphs can be daunting, so keep them short to retain the attention of your readers. It also helps to break up your work into logical pieces.

RULE 3:- Use the active, rather than the passive form. For example, “The Car was parked by me” is passive. But you should rather write “I parked the car”. It helps the reader to think in correct sequence and not back to front. It also makes understanding it clearer when you say WHO did it.

Sometimes people forget to say WHO when writing in the passive, for example “the car was parked”. Now YOU as the writer may know who parked the car, but your reader may not, BUT if you write in the active form, you are forced (correction: it forces you) to put WHO parked the car, it is a constant reminder to be clear about WHO did what.

Official government letters often use passive language to AVOID BLAME and responsibility! This is a common tactic, I know, because I once worked there! They will say things like “We regret that the rubbish was left outside” and not say “We regret that WE left the rubbish outside” because it makes them look bad! GENERALLY in anything you write, a maximum of 10% of sentences can be passive.

RULE 4: – Avoid NOMINALISATION. This long word describes the common practice of placing THE or A in front of verbs, then usually adding ion or ing to the end of the verb then sometimes adding of after the verb. This changes the verb into a noun. Example complete becomes the completion of also adding becomes (the) addition (of) or the adding of.

Also what I said already, the common practice of is a nominalisation too! We do it all the time! I do it all the time! Why? because it makes the language seem more elevated (this is a passive statement so, I should rather say, it seems to elevate the language more!). Nominalisation makes your writing more formal and abstract. NOT in contact and down to earth, which is what we want.

To remove a nominalisation, it sometimes means changing the whole structure of the sentence (or better put, it sometimes means we have to change the whole structure of the sentence, as I have just done!

We have to read and re-read through what we write to fine tune it. An example of nominalisation is ”The addition of this page will help you write” we need to change this to “This page was added to help you write”. The verb added had been nominalised to the addition. Also, since this is still passive, as a writer, we need to state who actually did the adding. So to make the final improvement say “We added this page to help you write”.

RULE 5: – Use words which come from Anglo-Dutch roots Rather than French roots. To understand what I just said (and it can be confusing for a few people)!! we need to understand the historical background of how the English language developed.

In 1066 AD (I think!) the French invaded England, and the simple language became complex because now new words were introduced. These new words were used by the rulers who took over, who were the Aristocrats. So the language became more posh and complex to sound more important. The common folk still used the Anglo-Dutch root words.

For example “PUT it down” is Anglo-Dutch whereas “PLACE it down” is French. “He TOOK it” is Anglo-Dutch which is simpler whereas ”He RECEIVED it” is French and is more complex. Understanding this secret will change the way you write a lot. If instead of a lot I said frequently, it would staight away make it complex because its French. Anglo-Dutch words tend to be one and two syllable words, whereas French words tend to be 3 and 4 syllable words.

So USE Anglo-Dutch words, when you have a choice between the two. Do not try to be eloquent and flambouyant. Although it may seem that language is now being made too basic, it ends up better because the language is more direct and dynamic if Anglo-Dutch words are used (or should I say, When we use Anglo-Dutch words, the language is more direct and dynamic).

For example, when I started this page, I could have said “There are a few basic tips I would like to mention”. This is a French word, and it is more aloof and dare I say, too posh to touch the common folk. Normally two or more syllable words ending in ion or ive or even ice are french (example commotion, relative, practice). Instead I started this page saying “There are a few basic tips I would like to tell you about ” which is far more direct, because we know I am telling YOU and not just mentioning. It is also more dynamic.

Also – logical pieces – the word ‘pieces’ has two syllables. And its French. Why not say – logical chunks? Also – we know immediately – the word ‘immediately’ is french, and has FIVE (!) syllables. Why not say - we know straight away?

Think of what I said about your sentence length - Keep them short to retain the attention of your readers – this was terrible, I used retain and attention both French words. I could have easily said – Keep them short to keep your readers awake!

RULE 6: – Do not interchange words which have the same meaning (oops, another long word - do not use and swap words which have the same meaning) For example - Keep the words the same to retain the same meaning - I have just used two words that mean the same thing, KEEP and RETAIN. If you do this, your readers will use twice as much brain space and energy to read your sentence - Keep the words the same to keep the same meaning. Not just in one sentence, but throughout.

RULE 7:- Avoid unecessary repetition, or unecessary words, for example – I went travelling away to London. Any suggestions for this? I travelled away to London, or I went away to London, or better still, I went to London. Another example – it sometimes means we have to change the whole structure of the sentence – suggestions? It could be shortened - we sometimes have to change the whole structure of the sentence. Which is perfectly PLAIN ENGLISH. For example, What this will tell you is that… can be shortened to This will tell you that…

RULE 8: – Forget classical grammatical rules. Begin some sentences with BECAUSE, FOR, AND, ALSO and SO - it carries force to do it… Like in the following paragraph:

RULE 9: - Because you want to be understood (correction: Because you want people to understand you), do not abbreviate (oops, a french word!). For getting your point across (correction: for you to get your point across), avoid slang words. And it goes without saying that you ought to avoid swearing. Also spell out numbers and avoid jargon (specialist or technical words). So these are the basic rules of PLAIN ENGLISH.

FINALLY, CHECK IT WITH MICROSOFT WORD

Microsoft Word has a very hepful feature which can check whether you have followed these rules! Click on TOOLS > OPTIONS and then click on the Spelling & Grammar TAB:

Towards the bottom, make sure the Show Readability Statistics is checked.

Once you have done so, insert your text in a Word document, and do a spelling and grammar check. TOOLS > SPELLING AND GRAMMAR. It will check spelling but keep clicking IGNORE until the readability statistics come up:

This will tell you that the average words per sentence is 14.9 which is good for a blog which should be around 15 (RULE 1). 

Secondly, the number of sentences per paragraph is 5.8 so the paragraphs are not too long. We should limit each paragraph to less than 6 sentences on average (RULE 2).

Number of passive sentences used is 7% which is less than 10% (RULE 3).

Flesch Reading Ease is formula to measure everything, including the use of Nominalisation and Anglo-Dutch words. (If you were sharp you would have realised that when I said the use of it was nominalisation!) If the Flesch Reading Ease is greater than 70 (as in this case it was 77.6) then you have eliminated most nominalisation. You have also used enough Anglo-Dutch words, eliminated many French words, and generally have used simple one- and two- syllable words without much jargon.

Flesch-Kincaid Grade level also checks everything. Grade level 6 is an absolute maximum. This means that whatever you write should be understood by a 6th grader!  The results show a grade level of 6.1 – a little too high for a blog. The most punchy blogs are grade level 5. This is what you should aim for in a blog.

You may be shocked when you check some of your posts and find that they are grade level 12. This is the highest possible, but way too high for the average person reading through your blog!