Where Does Plain Language End and Editorial Style Begin? And Why Your Organization Needs Two Separate Guides

A recent fabulous Plain Canada Clair webinar about style guides sparked conversation about the confusion many organizations face:
How much should a plain language guide cover, and when should editorial guidance take over?

The short answer is that a plain language guide should help people make writing understandable, while a style guide should help people make writing consistent.
Trying to combine the two usually dilutes both.

What a Plain Language Guide Is—and Is Not

A plain language guide exists to help writers and reviewers answer one core question: Will the intended audience understand this? It should cover the decision-making aspects that affect clarity and usability.

What belongs in a Plain Language Guide

• How to identify your audience and their information needs,
• How to structure information logically and support cognitive processing (see this comma story),
• When and how to define terms,
• Where and how to support content with visuals, tables, and alternative formats,
• What techniques to use for evaluating clarity and actionability (testing, peer review, heuristics),
• What accessibility considerations matter for the organization, including multilingual writing and localization for cross-cultural audiences.

These are decisions that affect meaning, comprehension, and user success.

What does not belong in a Plain Language Guide

• Whether you capitalize job titles,
• Whether you use % or “percent,”
• Whether you use serial commas,
• Whether you spell out numbers one through nine,
• How you write date formats (ok, if you localize you may need to remind people in your plain language guide that formats vary—and refer them to the appropriate style rule!).

These issues matter—but they don’t affect comprehension in the same way. They affect uniformity and brand identity. And that’s the job of an editorial style guide.

The Purpose of an Editorial Style Guide

An editorial style guide is your organization’s “house rules.” Its job is to ensure consistency to:

• Reduce cognitive friction,
• Build trust,
• Support efficiency for writers and editors,
• Protect brand identity,
• Reduce ambiguity in legal and policy documents through predictable use of grammar (see this comma story).

What belongs in an Editorial Style Guide

• Capitalization and punctuation rules
• Spelling preferences
• Number formatting
• Abbreviations and acronyms
• Tone and voice
• Formatting conventions
• Citations and references
• Templates, boilerplate, and standard language (which should be done in plain language!)

These decisions don’t require audience testing or cognitive heuristics—they require specifications.

What about glossaries? OK, yes, terminology can be tricky: preferred terms and banned terms go in the style guide. Definitions of brand terms go in the style guide. Guidelines for defining terms go in the plain language guide.

Why Combining Them Causes Problems

When organizations blend the two, they typically end up with a document that:

• is too long for writers to use,
• buries high-impact clarity guidance under technical guidance,
• forces plain language reviewers to argue about punctuation instead of reader needs,
• makes training more confusing, not less.

Worse, it sends the message that “plain language = grammar rules,” which is… exactly the opposite of plain language’s purpose. For a style guide, grammar is the goal. For plain language, grammar is the means.

Plain language is about helping people understand information so they can act on it. Editorial style is about helping organizations communicate consistently so readers can move past decoding to interpreting messages. Those goals are not the same.

The Sweet Spot: Two Guides That Work Together

A modern communication ecosystem works best when you have:

1) A Plain Language Guide

A practical document that teaches writers how to think clearly and express thoughts . It should be short, actionable, and focused on communication goals and user-centered decision-making.

2) An Editorial Style Guide

A reference document for editorial decisions—for look-up rather than instruction.

3) Cross-references between them

For example:

“For rules on capitalization, see the Editorial Style Guide.”
“If a technical term must be used, follow the Plain Language Guide’s approach for defining terms.”

This keeps each guide focused and functional, while making the relationship between them clear.

What Should Go Where? A Quick Heuristic

Ask this: Is this about whether readers will understand the content?

If yes → Plain Language Guide

Or: Is this about whether writers will produce predictable-looking content?

If yes → Editorial Style Guide

It’s that simple—and that powerful.

Here’s a comparison with coding. (If you never tried, here’s a very short Hello World hands-on–technically markup and not programming, but it illustrates function versus convention: change red to GREEN as background color and run it.)

• Plain language = the logic and architecture of your communication, like a programming language.

• Style guide = the conventions and formatting used to express it, like case choices for code.

Honor the Purpose of Each Tool

Plain language and editorial style are partners, not competitors. One helps you make sense. The other helps you look like you belong to the same organization. When each guide does its own job, writers spend less time debating commas and more time ensuring readers understand the information they need to navigate systems, make decisions, and participate fully.

Plain language opens doors. Editorial style keeps the hallway tidy. You need both.

—-

P.S.: A Quick Comma+ Story

Remember the “5-Million Dollar Comma” case? It was a dispute in the State of Maine involving overtime pay exemptions and the tiny punctuation mark—or, more accurately, the lack thereof in: “marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution.” The missing comma AND the missing parallel structure between “distribution” as a noun and the gerunds on the list (-ing forms) convinced the court that the language was sufficiently ambiguous to grant drivers (who did the distribution) 5 years of overtime pay. The truck drivers argued they “distributed” goods but did no “packaging for shipment or distribution” (interpreted as a single activity), so the exemption should not apply to them!

Both editorial style and plain language choices matter.
Back to Plain Language Guide Section. Back to Style Guide Section.

In this moment of painful events–that bear witness to how much work we have ahead–education and clear information are not just essential, they are the only option. In doing my part from my professional place, I am applying plain language to promote respect and tolerance.

Among many other pieces of information that require a clarity makeover are clauses to prevent  discrimination. If you do not have an anti-discrimination clause, don’t just use one in gibberish; instead, adapt it to your audience in plain language! Education starts with clarity.

This is one example of how much clearer the message can be. Some of the techniques used here:
1-ditched repetition
2-use of cohesive ties
3-deletion of obvious content

BEFORE:

XYZ does not support and will not tolerate its Service being used to discriminate against others, especially when based on race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age, disability, ancestry or national origin. You are not permitted to use the Service in a manner which would or would likely incite, promote or support such discrimination and you must not use the Service to incite or promote hostility or violence. If we believe in our sole determination that your use of the Service is being used to discriminate, especially if based on race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age, disability, ancestry or national origin, we may permanently or temporarily terminate or suspend your access to the Service without notice and liability for any reason.

AFTER:

At XYZ, we will not allow you to use our Service to unlawfully discriminate or support hostility or violence based on race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age, disability, ancestry or national origin.

If you do, we may terminate or suspend your access to the Service without notice or liability.

In a recent series of edits and translations, I found myself repeatedly fixing “isotopic breaks” that AI or inexperienced writers and translators had missed. An isotopy is a set of words and expressions that echo an idea throughout the text. Some linguists define it as a set of expressions linked by a common semantic denominator.

Bear with me, I know isotopy seems like such a technical term! But it simply means “same topic,” from combining the Greek-derived forms iso, same, and topic, subject of discussion. Maintaining isotopy means that won’t veer off-topic, introduce contradictory references, or mix figures of speech from different spheres.

Broken isotopies occur when the context for a word wasn’t right or the word wasn’t right for the context. In reference to my headline image, you’d hardly bring up the word “delectable” to describe a slice of pizza dumped on the street.

Now, the easiest way to create isotopy is to use words that belong together to weave threads of meaning. Throughout the text, words that belong together lend unity to the text by repeating, alluding to, or adding details about an certain idea by using related words and phrases, and figures of speech.

You will notice that the threads of meaning you create can respond to different connections. Some words are linked together by more abstract connections, some share more concrete ties. And it is useful to understand the differences. Here are some of the main types of connections between words:

Conceptual Isotopies

In conceptual isotopies, words and phrases are linked by meaning. These clusters include words that share semantic features and belong to the same field. For instance, table and furniture have meaning in common. As you may know, table is a hyponym or more specific word than furniture, which is a more general word or hypernym. Words like table, chairs, desk, dresser, sofa, etc. are related by definition. Of course this conceptual relatedness can become quite abstract, as with mathematical concepts like the periodic functions sine, cosine, and tangent — and their reciprocals, cosecant, secant, and cotangent.

Pragmatic Isotopies

In pragmatic isotopies , words are linked by habits and cultural ties. These clusters emerge from customary practices and cultural norms rather than through intrinsically shared meaning. Consider the words table, bowl, and bacon. What do they have in common? In essence, not much. They do not presuppose each other or overlap in meaning. Yet, they come seamlessly together in the context of ‘American breakfast.’ The fact that these items do not coexist in the breakfast practices of other cultures is testament to their conceptual distinction.

Sometimes, a set of cultural connections is so ingrained that we forget the connections depend on cultural norms. Depending on the audience you write for, relying on their ability to connect culturally related ideas can hinder their comprehension.

For example, if you use references to American football’s stop-and-go nature with 60 minutes of regulation time but only 11 minutes of action, you may lose a British reader accustomed to some 90 minutes of ongoing action in rugby or soccer.

Familiar Expressions

In sharing information with a reader, it is generally a good idea to add new information in the context of familiar information to scaffold understanding and learning. Occasionally, it is ok to surprise your reader.  So, in writing and translation, it serves you well to know the crystallized expressions used in your subject matter. These expressions often started a innovative figures of speech but have lost their creative value and they are now so common that we no longer notice them. Among such expressions are:

• Figures of speech that have become common terms, like “mouth of a river” or “eye of a needle.”
• Figures of speech that have become collocations, like “wave of enthusiasm” or “a storm of allegations.” Collocations are words used together much more often than other equally reasonable options (maybe “gust of enthusiasm” or “hurricane of allegations.”)
• Figures of speech that have become idioms, like “being over the moon,” “having butterflies in your stomach.” Idioms are formulaic or fixed expressions that no longer have a startling effect for their figurative meaning even when they do not mean what the words literally say.

Words in Context

All of these microcosms of meaning come into play when you write or translate and need to bring your words to the right context and bring the right context to your words. Context matters because:

1. words are polysemic, and
2. people are not only different from each other in their abilities and interests, but also wear many hats as individuals.

About a): The fact that a word looks the same in different contexts is not enough indication that they will mean the same. We call homonyms those words that have the same spelling (or pronunciation in speech) but different meanings. Words can even change their part of speech and look the same.

In translation, we need to pay additional attention to:

• false cognates: words that look alike in two languages but mean different things. For instance, embarrassed and embarazada (meaning ashamed versus pregnant) or fabric and fábrica (cloth versus factory.
• contextual translations of a single word that requires different words in the target language. For instance, one of the words of the moment, mask, can translate into Spanish as máscara, antifaz, careta, barbijo, gafas, ocultar, and camuflar, among others (meaning mask, decorative mask, fencing mask, surgical mask, scuba mask, to hide, to conceal)

About b): We need to adapt content and form to our audience. This becomes particularly tricky because audiences differ not only in shared group features but in individual features as well. For instance, the content, style, and depth I find appropriate, useful, interesting, or fun as a mom may not be the same than those I favor as a professional, a friend, a daughter, or a boss.

Nowadays, with so much automation at work, writers, translators, and editors need to be particularly wary of context to make sure the right meaning is surfacing in the right way at the right time!

So you have a first draft. And it feels great, doesn’t it? It just needs revising. And you have the best intentions. You set out to tighten the text and present the best version to your readers.

But you find clutter. Clutter in text (and in life) does not just mean extra or unnecessary stuff. Clutter is also stuff out of place and stuff that doesn’t fit right. Jargon in a patient education leaflet is clutter. Imprecise terminology in a surgeon training manual is clutter. Erratic verb tenses create clutter with confusing time references. Disorderly class inclusion (jumping from some to all to many) create clutter by disorienting the reader.

Mistake #1: You are not Focused on One Idea at a Time.

As you start decluttering a passage, forking paths get the best of you. You start revising an issue, but the next issue catches your attention. So, you stick a note to come back to the first one as the second one distracts you from your original decluttering.

Before you know, you’ve spent most of your time jumping from passage to passage, adding something here and chopping something there, creating a bigger mess than the one you started with. Perhaps, you set off get rid of weak verbs and notice nominalizations bloating the text. You switch to verbalizing nouns instead. Or, you were editing for gender neutrality, but verb tenses got in the way, and now you are addressing time references instead of pronouns. You just spent valuable time without readable results.

Instead of trying to rid a passage of all its clutter, try focusing on one issue at a time. Don’t let yourself move on to the next one until the one at hand is done.

To identify issues, you may want to go over one or two paragraphs of text. Name all the issues you are dealing with: it’s likely you will encounter them throughout your piece. Prioritize your list of issues and work through the text one issue at a time. You don’t need to know technical linguistics terms—though, over time, you may want to pick up a few to share ideas with others.

You may choose to tackle a substantial issue, like the order of information throughout the text. If you are explaining a procedure, are all steps in sequence? If you are addressing an arguable issue, did you include a rebuttal? If you are narrating a story, do your tenses make sense, or did you jump from past to present to future haphazardly?

The key is to split the text into issues and inspect one passage at a time so you have a specific focus. To get started, you can use my free printable decluttering checklist Declutter Checklist_With_Examples. It will help you pick specific aspects of text and focus on one at a time.

Mistake #2: You Keep Too Much Stuff!

You start off with the best intentions, but you end up talking yourself into keeping ideas or phrases you don’t really need in your piece.

You think that it sounds really good (or, that it makes you sound really good), or that your readers might need it to understand the background for your piece, or that it is a valuable piece of information even if it is not completely within the scope of this piece.

The fact is that you don’t need to hold onto words or ideas that make you feel as if you’re not good enough. Your readers want to read your piece. You do have valuable information for them. Embrace you inner rockstar. Take a deep breath, and clear the text from pompous, irrelevant, and second-guessing ideas.

If something unnecessary for the piece is truly valuable to you because of its nifty wording, explanatory value for your point of view, or informational value for your readers in the future, by all means, add it to your rolodex of ideas. Just keep it out of this piece.

Be ruthless when it comes to getting rid of the extra stuff in your text.  It pays off. Your readers will read effortlessly what you created so laboriously.

Mistake #3: You Dive In Without A Plan

Of course, you need a solid rationale for what to keep and what to let go of. Like your closet, your text might contain pointless, ugly, or sentimental items that you shouldn’t be keeping.

To make your selection, ask yourself these three questions about each idea, word, or phrase you are considering:

1. Does it have a purpose?
2. Is it meaningfully beautiful?
3. Am I using it as a security blanket or infatuated with it?

A particular item has a purpose if it moves your story forward and adds to the point of your piece. Beware of items that speak to the topic of your piece but deviate from your point. The point, or purpose, of your piece is a stance on the topic. To separate topic-related ideas from purpose-specific ones ask yourself what you want your readers to get out of this piece.

Meaningful beauty adds style to your text without sacrificing clarity. You don’t want to be dry and boring, or your piece may go unread. But an overly adorned piece will suffer the same fate.

Superfluous items, though possibly cute, accurate, or comforting, will spin your text in the wrong direction too. This does not mean you will never meander. But if you offer a detour, have a reason for it.

Check out these passages, about a mating hat that helped reproduce endangered peregrine falcons in captivity and save them from extinction. In the first passage, accurate and interesting yet completely tangential information clutters the text. All the text in italics is clutter. Notice, also, how redistributing the information placing the peregrine falcon in subject and topic position (with a passive voice sentence), is clearer and smoother.

 A ban on DDT saved the peregrine falcon from extinction. An Austrian chemist first synthesized DDT in 1874. DDT, or Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane was later used as an insecticide. Unfortunately, no one looked into the side effects that ultimately caused an environmental debacle. An ornithologist at Cornell University helped save the peregrine falcon as well. He invented a mating hat. You can confirm this story by googling it. Female falcons had become scarce. However, a few wistful males maintained a sort of sexual loitering ground. So, the ornithologist imagined, constructed, and then wore the mating hat. He then patrolled the loitering ground, singing like a bird

The peregrine falcon was brought back from the brink of extinction by a ban on DDT, but also by a peregrine-falcon mating hat invented by an ornithologist at Cornell University. If you can’t buy this, Google it. Female falcons had grown dangerously scarce. A few wistful males nevertheless maintained a sort of sexual loitering ground. The hat was imagined, constructed, then forthrightly worn by the ornithologist as he patrolled this loitering ground, singing, Chee-up! Chee-up! 
(Cherish this Ectasy, David James Duncan)

In addition to your content plan, you can dive in with a schedule in mind, especially if you are tackling a lengthy piece. You may assign an entire afternoon to go through every nook and cranny of your text (or any chunk of time that makes sense for your project.) But, by the end of your first hour, you find yourself exhausted, possibly with more clutter than when you started, feeling like you haven’t made any progress at all.

When you are working on a long piece, make a timed date with your text. You may only get to tackle one issue. That’s ok. Maybe you will choose to revise the imagery you used to explain something: Are your metaphors and analogies consistent, or did you jump from baseball to blackhole to ballroom throughtout your piece?  Or, you may choose to run through your piece looking for reference mismatches or making sure all the names and dates are correct. Limiting your decluttering time will allow you to focus on a specific task.

Revising one issue at a time may seem like a small win, but it will give you the motivation to keep going. You will avoid burnout and look forward to your next text date.

I know your text is an organic whole, and issues overlap. Keep them apart as much as possible. Towards the end of your decluttering process you get to fix any holes that your compartmentalized approach may have left behind. Approaching ideas in your piece in this way creates a mental shift that will have you decluttering like crazy!

I will be writing more about this mental shift and how to choose what to keep and what to let go of.