What is plain language? (Part One: Elements of the text) | Kim Sydow Campbell, Pros Write

This article is featured today, Feb. 11, in my online daily paper, Garbl's Plain English Paragraphs. The author's follow-up article is also featured today in my Plain English paper: What is plain language? (Part Two: Audience outcomes).

In the first article, Campbell writes:

Perhaps the most obvious way to define plain language is to focus on the words a writer chooses. For instance, a common proscription from those interested in better workplace writing is for writers to avoid jargon. Jargon is a word with a highly specialized or technical meaning.

With links to related videos, she continues by describing other aspects of plain language writing. They include:

• conciseness
• active vs. passive voice
• word choice
• parallel structure
• tone
• placement of the bottom line 
• paragraph unity
• cohesion
• transitions
• format.

Campbell's second article covers equally important considerations for following plain-language principles. She writes:

[A] document is successful only when it fulfills the writer’s purpose for the document’s readers. There’s no such thing as a successful document considered in isolation.

And then she discusses the desired outcomes for readers:

• comprehension
• usability
• efficiency
• credibility
• selection.

She concludes (emphasis added):

I understand plain language as the outcome of an audience’s interaction with a text, and the outcome includes but is not limited to comprehension. You may have noticed that I have said next to nothing about the third point of the rhetorical triangle. That means you can expect Part Three to address document writers and their purposes for writing.

Update: Here's my blog post on Campbell's fourth and final article in this series. It has links to her three other articles. 

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My Plain English paper is available at the Plain Language tab above and by free email subscription.