Use Fewer Words

Not long ago I gave a talk at Design Swansea (thank you!) called Plain Words. My main point was that you should use the simplest, most widely understood language you can to get a message across. I showed a few pompous signs I've found over the years, the kind that starts with "Polite Notice" and has "Would patrons kindly refrain from…" and makes you immediately want to do what the sign is telling you not to, just because it's so rude.

Archaic language is a problem too: London Underground is fond of using alight where exit might be better; I was near a group of Spanish tourists hearing this for the first time and (while they understood the meaning) they found it quite funny to suggest people catch fire at South Kensington to visit the British Museum. 'Alight' isn't wrong but it's not right either.

It's not dumbing down, instead it's not wasting people's time and effort figuring out what you mean. Writing for GOV.uk has some good guidelines (of course), and this is an interesting write-up on the kind of language scientists prefer to use (as an example of definitely not dumbing down).

So there's that, all well and good.

And here I have a bit of a whinge. There's this style of writing I call Great American Novel Journalism where you wonder if the writer is being paid by the word. You scan through the thing hoping to find the main points but sometimes it's just all filler.