Furthermore, Canadian companies had neither systematically studied how plain language had contributed to their operations nor isolated and measured how much value plain language had added.

Our Response to the Need

With a grant from the National Literacy Secretariat, Praxis is piloting a groundbreaking pilot project. We are systematically studying the business impact of introducing plain language in the Canadian private sector. We intend to demonstrate the influence and positive effects of plain language on organizational performance and the corporate bottom line.

Our overarching goal is to convince Canadian businesses to:

• change their attitude toward using a plain language approach to communication;

• allocate resources for plain language over the long term.

A Snapshot of Our Approach to the Project

For our experiment Praxis has partnered with two large Canadian companies in the telecommunications and financial services industries. We put together an interdisciplinary team of experts in plain language, on-line documentation, usability, measurement and evaluation, financial analysis, and organizational change to develop and implement two document revision initiatives.

Our team created an analytic framework to compare how intranet documents at each company perform before and after we improve them. Specifically, two groups of end users of the documents at each host company were observed. One group used the original documents, and the other group the plain language versions.

Currently we are comparing differences between the groups in a variety of performance measures to determine whether or not benefits might accrue to each company as a result of our plain language interventions.

Quantitatively we expect that using plain language documents for internal online communications will show tangible benefits to each company by reducing costs and improving user performance.

Qualitatively, we expect that the benefits of using plain language documents will include greater employee satisfaction and a willingness from each company to modify current documentation practices.

Finally, we anticipate that the process of conducting the study in each company will result in a change in organizational attitude toward plain language as a better way to operate.

Grotsky, R. (1998). Get to the Point: A Strategy for Writing Clearly at Work. Toronto: Praxis Adult Training and Skills Development.

Rose Grotsky is the Project Coordinator at Praxis Adult Training and Skills Development, e-mail: rmg@ican.net