Help Me Understand: An Introduction to Plain Language

Deborah Bosley, the founder and principal of The Plain Language Group explains why it’s important for publishers of academic, professional, medical, and scientific content to express information in simple, easy to understand terms that will help them expand their audience to people who have a significant interest or benefit in reading the materials, but lack the academic background required to understand complex, industry-specific language. 

Transcript

Nicole Tomassi: 0:07

Welcome to Westchester words, education ed tech and publishing I'm Nicole Tomassi, and in this episode, I'll be talking with Deborah Bosley, who is the founder and principal of the plain language group. As you may have guessed from the name of Deborah's company, we're going to discuss why it's important for businesses to express information to their consumers in simple, easy to understand terms, Deborah, it's a pleasure to welcome you to Westchester words.

Deborah Bosley: 0:32

Oh, thank you. I was so delighted to be invited for this podcast today,

Nicole Tomassi: 0:37

And we're really glad to have you here and to learn from you. So let's begin by having you share a little bit about your professional background and how that led to you starting the plain language group.

Deborah Bosley: 0:48

I, uh, got a PhD, uh, sort of midway in my life and, uh, became a technical writing professor at UNC Charlotte, where I was tenured. And I was there for about 25 years. I call myself an accidental entrepreneur because plain language sort of fell into my lap. The chair of the English department asked, uh, me one day, if I would be interested in doing some work at Firs Union bank in helping risk management people write proposals to sell more hedge funds. Now I had no idea what a hedge fund was. I didn't know what risk management was, but part of the purpose of helping them write these proposals was to get them out of the mindset of thinking only about financial jargon and instead writing more in, in a human capacity. And so, so that was my introduction in a way to the use of, uh, clear writing outside of academia. Uh, from there, I started just giving presentations uh, the society for technical communication and others found out about the center for plain language, which was just literally beginning at that point and discovered that there actually was a field of plain language and tech writing is very similar. I mean, taking technical information and making it accessible. Uh, so while I was a professor, I was also working on developing my reputation in the plain language field. And then eventually actually just started The Plain Language Group. So when I retired, I moved into that field completely in 2008 while I was still, of course, being a professor and Dodd-Frank hit, all these disclosures were now required to be written in plain language. And companies were looking for people who had the sort of impramatur of plain language. So I started out by calling myself a plain language expert companies would Google plain language and my name would pop up. And so I took off rather quickly and then built obviously my reputation. So I believe that people have a right to understand information that affects their lives. And so I'm in it for the good of customers, citizens, just all of us who are struggling with overly complex information every day of our lives.

Nicole Tomassi: 3:29

Yeah. There's a lot out there to try to wrap your arms around and make sense of, so the easier the terms are to understand it, I think the better. Deborah now that you've given us a general overview of how you came to be a plain language expert and the founding of the plain language group, can you give us a definition of what plain language is?

Deborah Bosley: 3:50

Plain language is the use of proven writing and design strategies that is their research behind it, uh, that make it easy for your intended audience to find information, understand it, and then use it. I think in, in a way the three principles are clear, concise and credible. So we have research to support all of the writing strategies that we advocate, for instance, using the active voice, being concise, obviously phrasing things in the positive, using short sentences, short paragraphs, et cetera, to avoid memory load, uh, when people are reading avoiding jargon, or if it's impossible to avoid it, then at least defining it. So there there're about 12 to 15 strategies that we advocate, including how something is formatted. If something looks too dense, uh, you know, you just throw it away or you delete, or you don't bother to read it. So all of the principles and the practices of plain language are intended to both get the audience involved in the content, but give them content that they can easily understand.

Nicole Tomassi: 5:11

I'm hearing a lot of parallels in this and marketing. And I find, and especially over the last several years, I've had to make content much more digestible and using those shorter sentences, shorter paragraphs, more visual components to make it more engaging. Uh, so it seems like they're on similar pathways and you had also touched on this in a Ted talk you had given where you explained that content design is something that needs to be as easy to understand as the words that are being used. Why do you feel that having both matters?

Deborah Bosley: 5:47

Well, I believe in form and function. And so the design will first pull people in. So if something is formatted and looks easy, then people are more likely to read it. Um, and I think design, and you know, it's almost a question that I can't really answer, cuz the answer seems so obvious when you read anything other than let's say a novel or even in a textbook, there are design elements in, in photographs or visuals and a lot of data or information for instance is numerical. So therefore we advocate for the use of clear, easy to understand tables or graphs in different in terms of marketing tends. If you'll pardon me for saying it this way tends to use visuals more as a pretty up, or you can see yourself in it, you look like me. Therefore I might read what you've written and design in plain language is, is really more involved in helping the reader realize almost immediately that they will be able to understand this information. So the designs are advocates for clarity as well.

Nicole Tomassi: 7:11

That makes a lot of sense to me. You had hit on something else in that Ted talk where you said that people read with emotion first, and then they're looking for information or data within that content that validates that emotional decision. Does that hold true regardless of what type of content they're reading?

Deborah Bosley: 7:29

Primarily, I'm talking about content that is transactional or content that is informational to the extent of like how much interest am I gonna be paying on my credit card? We take about three to four to five seconds to decide if we're gonna read something. I'll use a, an example from a, a case study I did. So a company sent a letter out to people who were nearing retirement and it was a financial institution. And the purpose of the letter was to let people know that, Hey, when you reach a certain age, you have to take a certain amount of money out of your investments because the IRA requires it, minimum distribution option, they call it. We did some testing on this letter and discovered, this is really the first time where this company said to me, we had no idea that people had such an emotional response to what we sent them. Uh, people who received these letters, what they saw was the IRS requires and they freaked out. They called the company. They had thousands of phone calls and actually the intention of the letter was we really wanna help you because this is something you have to do, but that IRS, it was bold. It was underlined, and so obviously people experience a lot of anxiety. The company wasted a lot of time and money, but getting back to the emotional aspect, if you receive something that you think is important and you can't understand it, you will become frustrated, anxious, even the emotion of they're wasting my time. Why are they giving me this? I don't get it. I don't care. I don't have time to figure it out. All of those are emotions that prevent us from reading content that could be really important to us like your mortgage disclosure, right? Whoever reads that. Nobody, if you think about, when you read literature, part of reading literature is the emotional, you know, pulling you in to the story, the plot, the characters, etcetera. Mm. So I think we undervalue or under-represent where emotion plays a part in our decisions about whether or not we're gonna read something. And then if it's friendly and helpful and conversational, we're more likely to feel like the company has our back. And they're engaged with us in helping us understand. Marketing people understand about emotions, right?<laugh>, you know, that's what you're going for. Right. Cause

Nicole Tomassi: 10:14

I understand. Emotion. And, and then, and then we deliver the facts

Deborah Bosley: 10:18

<laugh> right. Of course. And

Nicole Tomassi: 10:19

The same,

Deborah Bosley: 10:20

You know, the same is true here.

Nicole Tomassi: 10:22

So now that we understand a little bit more about how people take in written information and how the design of it enhances it, you already touched a little bit on how the financial industry can use this. Are there any other industries who are legally required to use plain language in the content that they're producing?

Deborah Bosley: 10:42

It depends whether you're talking about federal regs or state regs. So I'll just talk about regulation in general, all privacy policies, regardless of what entity they come from, uh, because of HIPAA are required to, uh, write those privacy policies in plain language Risa, which is retirement system for employee benefits that, uh, information written about employee benefits has to be written in plain language. And so both of those are examples that would impact almost anything from manufacturing detect to health, to finance. Uh, you know, I would, I would argue that every industry can benefit from plain language, but I think as far as regulations are concerned, more and more companies are falling under that requirement, that certain kinds of information be written in plain language mm-hmm<affirmative>. And usually it has to do with disclosures of one form or another. And just to throw in one more little caveat of, of emotion, which for me is annoyance. And that is the fact that they do it doesn't mean they do it well. And there are rarely consequences for not meeting the regulatory requirement for plain language. So that can be a problem as, as well.

Nicole Tomassi: 12:15

So there's no enforcement teeth, so to speak.

Deborah Bosley: 12:17

Right. Unless for some reason it may come up in conjunction with another problem within let's say a privacy policy. Then, then the fact that it wasn't written clearly might end up being part of it. But I don't think there are enough consequences for companies that don't do it, right. The S E C maybe is a little more stringent, but even there, not as much, cuz if they did, they wouldn't need to hire me to, or other plain language experts to help them do it. Confused language is rampant and confused language causes us as we said earlier, all these emotional responses and our inability to understand critical information in our life.

Nicole Tomassi: 13:04

See there's kind that sort of legislative stick, if you will, that plain language needs to be used in written communications, but I'm guessing that there's other benefits that companies who use plain language, that they tend to see better outcomes or effects from using it. Is there anything you can dive into more about that?

Deborah Bosley: 13:21

That's a problematic question only because companies don't usually reveal to me at least what the outcome is or in terms of tracking, other than perhaps as I alluded to earlier, what is the positivity rate of call-ins or are they getting fewer call-ins they let's say in, in the case of the example I gave earlier, when they sent that letter out, once we revised it, the positive calls went up to like 96% and this was shocking to them. And to me, the investors brought in millions of new dollars because the letter was helpful. It was friendly when they called the company, the company was helpful, it was friendly and they got a positive influx of profit. Now I can't say that that's a guaranteed that's gonna happen. And I can't even say I, we guarantee that your call negative calls will go down because not all companies check the data of did people call because they didn't understand the letter, but in general time spent is decreased considerably. So if you send a letter out and people understand it, they're not gonna pick up the phone and take time. And in a sense money from the company, asking somebody on the other end to explain it. But I think the most important thing is that, and again, there's evidence for this, that customers tend to trust companies that don't use a lot of jargon. They tend to trust companies where they understand the information. And there was a study done at Princeton where a psychology professor was interested in this topic, took content from very complex to very easy to understand and, uh, tested it with grad students. So in their twenties, grad students felt that the company and the writer that produced that complex information was being disrespectful and they lost respect for the company and the writer because they provided information that was too complicated to understand. So you have reputation, you have profit, you have time lost or gain and you have customer satisfaction. And I think all those things are exactly what companies want their brand to represent.

Nicole Tomassi: 15:55

I think you're right. And, and this kind of segues into my next question, cuz some of the clients that Westchester works with many university presses, academic publishers, industry associations, or policy groups, the published content, which is highly technical filled with jargon or really specialized. And you alluded it to it before that, making it more concise and more clear, it's a compelling reason that they should use plain language in their content, but is there other reasons why they should be considering using plain language

Deborah Bosley: 16:23

As a former academic myself and obviously published a lot cause otherwise<laugh>, I, I wouldn't have continued to be a professor. I do wanna say this when I would write an academic article, my intended audience were other academics in my narrow field or my field of tech communication. All of whom likely could understand that academic article because that's who they were as well in the field and academics. On the other hand, there's a push now toward, particularly in the area of science to get when there are clinical research or clinical trials being used that that article can be written scientifically for a scientific audience, but needs to contain. And I believe this is a requirement in Britain, actually in the UK rather needs to contain a plain language summary and that plain language summary then gives non-scientists access to the information in that study if they care to read it personally, I think that would be a great idea for all academic writing. We usually are required to write an abstract before the actual content of the article and, and it, at least that abstract should be written in plain language. Uh, I think there's a lot of information that the public would gain from having access to if they thought they could understand it. And, and I think also academics are sort of perceived as being the, the old saying in the Us of living in an ivory tower and you know, writing articles or other people read. But I think there's a, a tremendous amount of academic research that is really important for all of us in our daily lives. So I'm really a strong advocate for academics, presenting plain language summaries, even with their academic article for their academic colleagues.

Nicole Tomassi: 18:38

Is there advice that you could share for companies that are interested in learning more about how they can start using plain language and incorporating it into their business practices?

Deborah Bosley: 18:49

I think it's important for them to recognize the positive impact it will have on their business. In my experience, it starts at the top, not at the bottom. So the CEO or the CFO or the CMO or any of the CS or the head of HR, they have to notice there's a problem. And the problem again, could come from the number of calls they're getting, uh, or whatever. But I think part of what we do is advocate for the customer experience. And I think it's really important for companies to recognize that people will trust you. You will save money, you will gain reputation. It's better for your brand. And you're required in many instances to use plain language, but it really is a win-win for companies and for customers, or if it's a government agency, it's a win-win for citizens. We have a right to understand information that affects our lives, legally, for example, I, I I'll just do a shout out to Cigna, uh, who I did some work for. They actually had, I won't say a plain language department, but I would say they definitely had a plain language initiative that went across the company and they did training and presentations and you know, they were really doing it right in terms of getting the company itself engaged in the whole process, there has to be a reason why, and then there's a tendency for it to grow within the company.

Nicole Tomassi: 20:36

So it becomes like a, a, a pillar of the company's culture, basically.

Deborah Bosley: 20:40

That is the goal. But nevertheless, I think there are enough case studies and there are enough, it there's enough information out there to explain why it's beneficial to everyone, for companies to think much more about plain language,

Nicole Tomassi: 20:56

As we're about to wrap up here today. I do have one last question that I enjoy asking first time guests of the podcast, because I find their responses are really thoughtful. What is one piece of advice that you wish someone had given to you when you were first starting out in your career or a piece of advice that you would wanna share with others?

Deborah Bosley: 21:15

Well, this is a piece of advice I wanna share with people like me in the field of plain language, but I think it, it resonates across many other areas, which is when someone asks you to do something that you don't know how to do say yes, and figure it out.

Nicole Tomassi: 21:33

I've actually done that a few times over my career and you find out you have the capacity to learn and grow from it. So you can surprise yourself to the upside.

Deborah Bosley: 21:43

Absolutely, absolutely. The same with the company say yes to plain language and then figure it out

Nicole Tomassi: 21:49

With the help of someone like yourself. I think they'll have, you know, an easier time on the uptake of that. I found this to be a very good introduction to plain language, and I'm sure we'll explore the topic a bit more in depth in a future episode, Deborah, I really wanna thank you for taking the time to join me today on west Chester words.

Deborah Bosley: 22:07

Thank you so much. I had, I had a wonderful time. It was a great interview. Thank you.

Nicole Tomassi: 22:11

You're welcome. And uh, for our listeners, we'll have links on the podcast page of the west Chester website, where you can find the Ted talk that I referenced earlier, as well as some of the other resources that we discussed in the podcast. And we wanna thank Deborah for generously sharing all that with us. And you can also visit Deborah's website to learn, uh, more about plain language and how you can start incorporating it into your communications by visiting The Plain Language Group.com. Thank you for listening to this episode of Westchester words. If you're looking for previous episodes or want to read additional content that has been shared by some of our guests, please visit our websites. Westchester publishing services.com and Westchester education services.com for an international perspective, check out our sister podcast, Westchester words, UK and international available on the Westchester education UK website, Westchester education.co.uk or wherever you stream podcasts. We love hearing from our listeners and welcome your emails at Westchester words at Westchester ed SV, cs.com. Tell us what you enjoy hearing on our podcast or suggest topics that we can cover in future episodes. Speaking of future episodes, I look forward to having you join us for the next episode of Westchester words, when we'll be having another engaging conversation about a topic of interest to the education, ed tech and publishing communities until then stay safe, be well and stay tuned.