Keep it simple and stupid

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Forget what you learned at school.

You’re NOT writing an essay. You DON’T have to impress your teacher.

Provide information that EVERYBODY can understand—even readers who:

don’t speak the document’s language as their first language

aren’t sitting in a silent office but who, for example, are standing in a noisy production hall

don’t have much time

are frustrated because they didn’t succeed without reading the manual

So keep it simple and stupid (KISS principle):

Write short sentences.

Use simple grammar.

Use simple words.

Plain language is NOT evidence of poor education. Plain language is the foundation of clear user assistance.

No:

If you want to exert influence on the contents of a document, access the submenu item Edit in the File menu after having opened the document file successfully.

Yes:

To edit a document:

1. Open the document file.

2. Choose File > Edit.

No:

Congratulations for buying this sophisticated, highly effective phone, which has been designed with your most vital communication needs in mind.

Yes:

You can use this phone to make phone calls.

Top:

Leave out this sentence completely because it doesn’t provide any useful information.

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Can you measure simplicity?

Linguists have developed a number of indexes that attempt to measure the degree of complexity of a text. Some text editors have built-in functions to calculate these indices.

Don’t take these indices too seriously. A comprehensibility index provides a rough estimate, but comprehensibility is determined by many more factors than average word length and average sentence length.

Important: Don’t aim for a specific index value that’s said to be “adequate” for the educational level of your audience. User instructions can’t be too simple. Always aim for maximum simplicity. If you feel that your document might look too trivial for your audience, the document probably isn’t too simple but too detailed. Try to identify things that you can omit.

Can you use software to guarantee simplicity?

On the market, there are a number of programs that can make suggestions about how to simplify a text (see Tool Guide: Language and terminology tools). If you have access to one of these programs, go ahead and use it. Most of these programs can give you valuable feedback, however none of them can replace a human editor.

Also, don’t forget that it’s YOU who must structure and write clearly in the first place. If you don’t, neither software nor a human editor will have much of a chance to improve your text.


Be parallel

Be positive

Add syntactic cues

Make short sentences

Put the main thing into the main clause

Avoid parentheses and nested sentences

Feel free to start sentences simply

Feel free to end sentences simply

Use short, common words

Avoid abbreviations and acronyms

Use technical terms carefully

Always use the same terms

Avoid strings of nouns

Avoid stacks of modifiers

Avoid phrasal verbs

Avoid buzzwords

Avoid idiomatic expressions

Avoid developer jargon

Blacklist: Overblown words

Structuring: Keep the structure flat

Designing: Use clear and simple design