by Nicole Watkins Campbell
The practice of plain language has been around for quite some time, and anyone who has taken an editing course in the last 30 years has been trained in plain language principles (although it might not have been called that). Over the years our knowledge has expanded, and in June 2023 the plain language standards were published by the International Organization of Standards (ISO). Nicole Watkins Campbell put together information on these standards and other resources to help all editors who want to learn more and improve their plain language skills.
Editors can tweak the editing process to make a non-fiction or functional text even clearer and easier to read. Because when a text communicates clearly, readers trust it (and the writer) more. Plain language is a process that helps writers and editors focus on readers and their needs.
The process has been tested on millions of readers and in organizations as diverse as a Canadian bank, the European Parliament, and the US Army. It saves organizations and readers time, money, and effort, and improves their understanding.
The standards and more
Here are some plain language resources I use when I edit government or legal information.
First are the standards of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). Teams of experts from around the world created these standards and the ISO approved them. (You could theoretically have the ISO approve a standard for poetry if you really did your homework.) These are available from the Standards Council of Canada: ISO 24495-1:2023 Plain language — Part 1: Governing principles and guidelines and ISO 24495-2:2025 Plain language — Part 2: Legal communication. Three more standards are coming soon: implementing plain language, science writing, and document design.
A free Canadian plain language standard, CAN-ASC-3.1:2025 – Plain Language, is available through Accessibility Standards Canada. Their standard for plain language is broader than the basic international standard, with some guidance specific to creating accessible documents, but it is well aligned with the ISO.
Plain Language, Clear and Simple is an early Government of Canada publication for civil servants. The advice is consistent with that of the ISO standard, but is less robust. The government’s online Style Guide, Section 2.0: Communicate Clearly with Plain Language is also useful, especially if you have federal government clients.
The Better Legal Information Handbook is free and aims to help community workers give their clients information they need about the law. Community Legal Education Ontario provides legal information that anyone can readily use. If you have a client or work for an organization that has policies or bylaws, or is a legal information organization, this guide will help.
Oxford Guide to Plain English is available as an ebook or paperback from Amazon.ca or in paperback from Oxford University Press. The author, Martin Cutts, was an early leader in plain language. In the 1980s, UK government departments and some local governments hired him to train employees to write more clearly. He also wrote a guide to improve the quality of civil servants’ communication. These and other efforts (Martin’s public prizes for bad public documents) improved the quality of government writing in the UK.
Testing for readability
Readability is central to meeting our readers’ needs, but I always advocate against using algorithms to test this. Programs like Microsoft Word Editor and Hemingway Editor, and reading scores like Dale-Chall or Fry can only count syllables, words, and paragraphs to assign a reading ease score.
But reading is more complicated than plowing through syllables and long or awkward sentences, and the programs don’t account for readers’ needs. For example, they can’t tell you if paragraphs and headings guide readers well, or if a text gives readers the explanations they might need. Some programs can’t even distinguish between meaningless and meaningful sentences.
The gold standard for ensuring your text meets your readers’ needs is testing, which can be fairly simple or quite comprehensive.
This usability testing guide describes how to test technical documents for usability and readability. For example, you could run a paraphrase test with some representatives of the reading audience. Five audience members may be enough for useful results, according to usability expert Jakob Nielsen.
A type of fill-in-the-blank testing called Cloze testing may be more robust (and is more involved), but useful when clarity really matters. Health and safety information comes to mind here.
If you don’t know your audience well or can’t test a document, following the good plain language advice in the resources above can help clarify your text.
Nicole Watkins Campbell works to make communication about the law and governance clearer. She has edited public legal and financial information and apps, as well as accessibility-related information, to make them clear and comfortable to read. She trains editors and writers to improve government, legal, and technical writing.
This article was copy edited by Erin Della Mattia.
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