Education is one consideration, culture another, family circumstances yet a third. People arriving as refugees have different problems to face than people arriving through the family reunification program, or as entrepreneurs, or as people born here but primarily speaking other languages.

A major point in writing for these groups of people is to remember that they will almost certainly be using more formal language than first-language English-speakers do. We may try to make materials easy by using everyday language, but make sure meanings do not depend upon colloquial words, idioms or phrases, unless they are defined. As an example, when I wrote pamphlets on separation and divorce, I found that people with developmental disabilities struggled with those very words, but had no difficulty understanding split up with. The opposite was true for immigrants learning English. They knew, or could look up, the words separation and divorce very quickly, but split up with was unfamiliar.

Use the full form of any verbs, not contractions (they are rather than they’re).

Then there are initialisms and acronyms, such as RRSP T4, CPP, EI, BC and MLA. All will be unfamiliar, so remember always to spell out these terms the first time they are used in a document. Sometimes they vary even from province to province. Alberta, for instance, is the only province to use the term AISH (Assured Income for the Severely Handicapped).

As a side issue, difficulties can and do arise with immigrants whose first language is indeed English. Terminology varies from country to country. For instance, on one of my first days in Canada, I firmly told my young daughter to stay on the pavement to play, and received a cross look from a passer-by. Pavement in Britain means sidewalk, not street! The problem works both ways, too. I have heard a story about a Canadian who moved to Britain and answered the door one day to a couple of burly workmen. They told her they were her dustmen. Somewhat worried, she told them she did her own dusting. After some confusion, she discovered that in Britain dustmen are garbagemen.

Try to keep verbs in as simple a form as possible. As with people who have developmental disabilities, many immigrants struggle with words ending in ing. And many of our continuous tenses and conditional moods of verbs are quite complicated to use correctly.

Don’t talk down, though. There is no point in using baby words—they sound insulting and people still have to learn the correct words.

Avoid using metaphors
Many of these, like hat trick or three strikes and you’re out, are sports-related and may not mean anything to people unfamiliar with North American sports. Many more are simply out of date, such as a baker’s dozen or grist for the mill. Many are totally obscure until you have learned them. What, for example, is a housing bubble or a couch potato? If you say something is a piece of cake when you are speaking to new English-speakers, they may well wonder where the cake is.