As simple as possible…

Over-simplification is an issue that bothers me. I sometimes need SMEs to explain a new field/concept to me in excruciating detail so that I understand it well enough to start writing about it, but I don’t always include the same level of detail in what I write, because I know/expect that the intended audience is starting from a greater level of understanding than I did.

Wikiquote suggests that “Make things as simple as possible, but not simpler”, a quote popularly attributed to Einstein, is itself a simplification of “It can scarcely be denied that the supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience.”

The simplified version may be snappier and more user-friendly for most of us today, but the original, which appears in Einstein’s 1933 Herbert Spencer Lecture “On the Method of Theoretical Physics”, was simple enough for the intended audience. And that’s kind of the point.

It may be tempting to write/edit content so that it’s accessible to all, but over-simplification can alienate some audiences (possibly the intended ones), or even corrupt the intended meaning. Jargon has a bad name, but sometimes it’s a necessary evil – or just plain necessary, and not evil at all. There’s a reason that at least some of it evolved in the first place. Where the intended audience is sufficiently familiar with/immersed in the jargon of their field, using simpler language, more suited to a lay audience, becomes jarring and difficult to parse. Supplying glossaries, side bars, cheat sheets, and the like to complement jargon-rich content can support unfamiliar readers in getting up to speed with the use of technical/industry-specific terminology without impacting the apt-ness of content for more expert readers.

The following sites provide some information/guidelines on how to use plainer/simpler English, and also provide resources around the replacement of, or appropriate use of, specific industry jargon.

  • This Lynda course presented by Judy Steiner-Williams goes through the principles of plain English. (Though it does advocate against jargon.)
  • The UK-based Plain English Campaign has a section of free guides to plain English principles and guidelines, and industry-specific recommendations and glossaries. They also provide a comprehensive reading list.
  • The US-based PlainLanguage.gov has a Resources section that lists/links to books, articles, and training material on using plain language.

Of course, sometimes a less-plain English word shares a common root with an equivalent term in another language, in which case, using that term can make your content easier to parse for non-native readers. For this to work, though, you’ll need to know the predominant language(s) of your audience and what language roots they share with English (Greek and Latin are always good starting points). The following Wikipedia pages list some English words that share common roots with other languages:

And then there’s the whole issue of loan words to consider too.

Author: smurphy

Writer, mother, gardener, geek...