5 Plain Language
Crafting Your Message with Plain Language
Learning Objectives
Upon completing this chapter, you should be able to:
- identify active and passive voice, jargon, positive and negative tone, and unnecessary words in written and oral communications;
- rewrite a given message while adhering to five principles of plain language: active voice, common words, positive tone, reader focus, and short (concise) words and sentences;
- proofread another student’s work, or your own, with a focus on the five principles of plain language: active voice, common words, positive tone, reader focus, and short (concise) words and sentences.
No matter who your audience is, they will appreciate your ability to write using plain language. This is a key skill in any professional setting. Plain language writing—and speaking—will help you to get your message across clearly and concisely. This chapter will introduce you to the principles of plain language and allow you to practise them.
Principle 1: Use Active Voice
To communicate professionally, you need to know when and how to use either active or passive voice. Although most contexts prefer the active voice, the passive voice may be the best choice in certain situations. Generally, though, passive voice tends to be awkward, vague, wordy, and a grammatical construct you should avoid in most cases.
Recognizing Active and Passive Voice
To use active voice, make the noun that performs the action the subject of the sentence and pair it directly with an action verb.
Read these two sentences:
Matt Damon left Harvard in the late 1980s to start his acting career.
Matt Damon’s acting career was started in the late 1980s when he left Harvard.
In the first sentence, left is an action verb that is paired with the subject, Matt Damon. If you ask yourself, “Who or what left?” the answer is Matt Damon. Neither of the other two nouns in the sentence—Harvard and career—”left” anything.
Now look at the second sentence. The action verb is started. If you ask yourself, “Who or what started something?” the answer, again, is Matt Damon. But in this sentence, the writer placed career—not Matt Damon—in the subject position. When the doer of the action is not the subject, the sentence is in passive voice. In passive voice constructions, the doer of the action usually follows the word by as the indirect object of a prepositional phrase, and the action verb is typically partnered with a version of the verb to be.
The following sentences are in passive voice. For each sentence, identify
- the noun in the subject position,
- the form of the verb to be,
- the action verb, and
- the doer of the action.
Check Your Understanding
Decide whether each of the following sentences is active or passive.
Using Action Verbs to Make Sentences More Interesting
Two sentences can say the same thing but leave a different impression based on the choice of verb. Which of the following sentences gives you the most vivid mental picture?
- A bald eagle was ov