Use familiar language, known expressions and illustrations Tips:
- Choose familiar, everyday words and expressions (e.g., “quite” rather than “relatively”)
- Define specialized words and difficult concepts, illustrate them with examples and provide a glossary when it is necessary to use several such words/concepts
- Choose concrete rather than abstract words and give explicit information (e.g., “car crash” rather than “unfortunate accident”)
- Avoid jargon and bureaucratic expressions
- Use acronyms with care and only after having spelled them out
- Choose one term to describe something important and stick to it; using various terms to describe the same thing can confuse the reader
- Add tables, graphs, illustrations and simple visual symbols to promote understanding
Examples:
INSTEAD OF:
- 23-01-2003
USE:
- January 23, 2003
- We can reasonably
speculate that young
adults want to hear about
terrorism and security
issues.
- Young adults are likely to want to hear about terrorism and security.
- Tax payers are encouraged to e-file their tax returns.
- Did you know that you can file your tax returns on the Internet?