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Often a gap between perceived understanding and actual understanding

Companies that want to get the maximum benefit from their plain language programmes must focus on user research to ensure their documents meet the goal of presenting information in a way that the intended readers will find easy to understand.

That's according to Frances Gordon, a partner at plain language training and consulting firm, Simplified.

She says that the lack of an objective set of criteria for 'readability' and 'plain language' that is accepted as a standard by business and regulators is one of the challenges South African companies face as they roll out their plain language programmes.

"As it stands today, both the National Credit Act and the Consumer Protection Bill insist that various customer documents be written in plain language but stop short of providing criteria that companies can use to determine whether their documents comply," says Gordon.

‘‘The definitions of plain language in both these laws suggest that plain language starts with the reader; so it follows that companies should conduct extensive user testing to ensure that their documents are easy to read and understand.’’

Many companies cite time and money as obstacles to conducting thorough testing, but even some research with employees who don't form part of the plain language project team can yield valuable results, says Gordon.

But ideally, user research should be conducted across a representative sample of the audience the documents are intended for.

The most important rule in user research is that the tests establish not only whether readers believe that they understand the documents, but whether they actually do understand the document, says Gordon. 'There is often a gap between perceived understanding and actual understanding.’'

One way to test comprehension is to do a line-by-line analysis, getting the reader to explain each term. Presenting scenarios (If you change your mind about this policy, are you allowed to cancel it? How do you know?) is another valuable tool.

Many elements of plain language can be measured using plain language tools and methodologies, but these benchmarks should be combined with user-testing to ensure that the people who a document is intended for can reasonably be expected to understand it, says Gordon.

When using these objective measures, companies need to be wary of using tests that apply only to English; of using standards that are too rigid to taken into account differences in medium, purpose of document and audience; and of drawing up plain language criteria that are either too simple or too complex.

"Oversimplification is one major pitfall in plain language testing. Many objective methodologies focus on the easy-to-measure components such as active voice, short sentences and avoiding jargon," says Gordon.

"They exclude the more complex criteria, such as reader-focus, format, style and structure. Although more difficult to measure, these criteria are part of plain language, as defined in our legislation."

Companies need to consider elements such as document structure, customer logic, headings, design, fonts, justification, the information supplied and navigability as they try to write contracts, brochures, and other customer documents in plain language.

The needs of different audiences and media also complicate the adoption of plain language into a company's communications. Completeness of information - does the consumer have access to all the information needed to make an informed? - is also important.

Consumers must understand why the document is important to them, why they should sign it, and the consequences of agreeing to the terms and the conditions.

Simplified has developed an objective set of criteria for benchmarking readability from its understanding of the local market and its international experience in the plain language arena. The way each criterion is measured depends on the document type and the target audience.

Simplified has used these criteria to guide its work at several large financial institutions in South Africa, and has gathered feedback from clients to refine these benchmarks.

Parties who are interested in seeing or contributing to Simplified's plain language criteria can contact the company on info@simplified.co.za