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.

Different frameworks inevitably reflect the emphasis placed on different aspects of communication. ISO 24495-1:2023 organizes its guidance around four governing principles—relevant, findable, understandable, and usable—with “understandable” encompassing a wide range of linguistic and structural considerations, from wording to tone to cohesion. This structure serves the purpose of the standard, which is to provide a broad, outcome-based framework for authors across contexts. My plain language framework differs from  ISO 24495-1:2023 because it expands the four principles into five, grouped in my trademarked RAISE™ framework, which includes Relevance, Access, Intelligibility, Suitability, and Efficacy.

Unpacking “Understandable” in a Plain Language Framework

In my own practice, I have found it helpful to unpack “understandable” into the two distinct dimensions of Intelligibility and Suitability. I separate these not to diverge from the standard but to make explicit two linguistic aspects that require different kinds of decisions from authors—and which, while not discrete or sequential, can build on each other. So, RAISE™ offers a practical way to operationalize two linguistic dimensions at the heart of clear communication: how meaning is structured and how expression fits the audience, making them more visible and actionable for writers.

Intelligibility refers to what linguists call textuality: the construction of meaning through grammaticality, cohesion, and coherence. While ISO includes cohesion as a guideline under the Understandable principle (5.3.8), coherence—how ideas hang together logically and conceptually—deserves equal visibility, if not more! Cohesion and coherence interact to create clarity of thought, and the challenges involved in maintaining them differ markedly from those involved in shaping tone or choosing vocabulary. Treating intelligibility as its own principle highlights the cognitive work of structuring ideas so readers can follow the logic without undue inference.

Suitability, by contrast, involves adequacy: aligning tone, register, and stylistic choices with the needs, expectations, and cultural context of the intended audience, and the media and channels of communication. ISO situates tone within Understandable (5.3.7) as part of projecting respect and inclusiveness, but, in practice, style involves a broader set of interpersonal and contextual decisions. These choices carry substantial weight in whether readers feel seen, respected, and invited into the text as valid interlocutors.

Separating intelligibility and suitability is thus a practical decision rooted in how writers think and work. Authors routinely struggle with structure and idea-flow on the one hand, and with tone, voice, and audience fit on the other. When these are treated as one principle, the risk is that one dimension, often coherence, receives less attention than it needs for the text to succeed—especially in longer texts required for explanations and learning.

How Quadrants Support a Plain Language Framework

In the Visual Plain Language Guide (find the Guide here), I map written communication onto four quadrants defined by two intersecting dimensions: clarity of thought (cohesion + coherence) and adequacy of expression (tone, register, vocabulary). These dimensions generate four distinct types of text: clear technical communication, clear lay communication, poor technical writing, and poor non-technical or lay writing—what we often call gobbledygook.

This quadrant view makes one point especially visible: clear thinking is transferable. When the underlying ideas are coherent and well-sequenced, it becomes possible to create both a clear technical version and a clear lay version from the same conceptual core. Structure and logic remain stable; only the expression layer changes, as it were.

By contrast, when a document lands in the “poor” half of the chart—whether technical or lay—it usually signals problems in the idea layer, not just the wording. No amount of de-jargoning will fix incoherent content because the problem isn’t in the lexicon; it’s the absence of a rationale.

This quadrant model therefore underscores why I separate intelligibility from suitability in my five-principle framework. Cohesion and coherence give you the internal architecture that supports multiple versions for multiple audiences. Tone and register then allow you to adapt that architecture for readers with different backgrounds, needs, or levels of expertise. Clear thinking first; clear expression follows.

Why Clear Thinking Matters in a Plain Language Framework

In this framework, clarity of thought is essential for reader understanding and it also becomes a powerful tool when creating different versions of the same content for multiple audiences. When the underlying ideas are coherent (logically sequenced and structurally sound), it becomes much easier to adapt the message for audiences with different levels of expertise, cultural backgrounds, or communication needs. A well-formed conceptual architecture allows you to adjust vocabulary, tone, and examples without having to rebuild the message each time. In other words, textuality provides the stable “skeleton” of meaning, and adequacy lets you tailor the “surface” for each group. This separation of layers is particularly useful in multilingual contexts, regulated environments, and collaborative projects where stakeholders require variations of the same content. Starting with a clear, coherent core reduces duplication of effort and results in versions that remain aligned in purpose and substance while meeting readers where they are.

A Clearer Tool for Writers

Ultimately, I use five principles not to complicate the ISO model but to give authors a clearer diagnostic tool. Distinguishing clarity of thought (intelligibility) from kindness of expression (suitability) helps writers recognize which choices affect the logic of the message and which affect its relationship with readers. Both contribute to understanding, but they do so through different mechanisms. Making that distinction explicit supports better planning, drafting, and revising—while remaining fully compatible with the intent and scope of ISO 24495.

Note: Access in the RAISE™ Framework includes organization of the message, structure of the document, multimedia supports, and digital accessibility as defined by WCAG Standards.

This post walks through how the guide came to life: the problems it aimed to solve, the research behind it, and the design decisions that shaped the final framework.

Why I Created the Visual Plain Language Guide

The guide began from a simple question I kept getting in workshops, client projects, and conversations with other communicators:

“Plain language makes sense in theory — but how do I see it?”

Plain language is often taught as a set of writing rules, but what I witnessed repeatedly were moments of visual confusion:

• text structured in ways readers couldn’t navigate

• ideas buried because the hierarchy didn’t guide the eye

• information mapped in the writer’s mind, but not for the reader’s brain

Those who know me a little know I am BIG on cohesion and coherence–the visible links and the underlying clarity of thought that go into good writing. So I set out to show, even if a little, how these come to life. And I started sketching. I started with my existing RAISE™ wheel and it all evolved from there.

Those sketches became motifs: the target for goals (page 9), the puzzle pieces for flow (page 22), the hand and heart for empathy (page 23). Eventually, they evolved into a unified visual language to communicate the concepts of plain language — not within design, but through design.

A Visual Guide — Not a Design Guide

One thing I want readers to understand is: This isn’t a guide about visual design. It’s a guide that uses visual design to teach plain language.

Every icon and layout choice serves a conceptual purpose:

• The RAISE™ principles wheel (page 6) represents balance and interplay.

• The quadrants of clarity (page 7) visualize the differences in clarity and gobbledygook for lay and specialized communication.

• The 10-step circular diagram (page 8) positions clarity as an iterative, non-linear process.

I didn’t set out to create a “pretty PDF.” I set out to make abstract principles visible and memorable. In the Visual Plain Language Guide, each visual is tied to a principle or technique for making communication easier to find, understand, and use.

How the Guide Took Shape

Here’s the development journey behind the scenes:

1. Grounding the guide in international standards

Years before the ISO 24495-1 Plain Language Standard existed, I developed the RAISE™ model—Relevance, Access, Intelligibility, Suitability, and Efficacy—as a practical way to explain what makes communication clear. It grew out of years of observing where communication breaks down and noticing that “understanding” isn’t one thing; it’s a combination of how clearly something is expressed (intelligibility) and how well it fits the reader’s needs and context (suitability).

When ISO began drafting what would become the first international plain language standard, I was invited to join the technical committee responsible for shaping it. It was remarkable to see how closely the developing ISO principles aligned with the structure I had already been using in RAISE™—even though the model predated the standard.

The only real difference is conceptual emphasis. ISO includes “Understandable” as one of its five principles, while in RAISE™ that idea unfolds into its two essential dimensions:

• Intelligibility — the clarity and precision of the expression

• Suitability — the appropriateness and resonance of the style for the intended readers

Together, they capture what understanding actually requires in real-world communication: clarity expressed in a style that meets readers where they are.

Because of this natural alignment, RAISE™ maps cleanly to the ISO standard, allowing the guide to stand on an internationally recognized foundation while preserving the nuance, depth, and reader-centered structure that originally inspired RAISE™.

2. Turning research into approachable visuals

Once I knew the guide needed to show plain language, not just explain it, I returned to the research. Studies on cognitive load, reading behavior, and visual processing all point to the same truth: people understand faster when information is paired with clear, meaningful visuals. Not decorative visuals — but visuals that orient, anchor, and reinforce meaning.

So I began developing a visual vocabulary for the guide: a system of icons, metaphors, colors, and spatial patterns that help readers grasp concepts at a glance. Every visual decision had a purpose:

• The magnifying glass + lightbulb + gear (page 4) conveys “find, understand, use.”

• The audience icons (page 12) show diversity without over-specificity.

• The color palette leans friendly and modern — bright but soft, not childish.

The visuals aren’t decoration; they’re cognitive scaffolding.

3. Building a structure readers can follow at a glance

The guide mirrors the very principles it teaches:

• Clear sections (Goals → Readers → Structure → Design → Words →…)

• Consistent iconography

• Headings that double as meaning cues

• Logical flow from “thinking” steps to “crafting” steps to “refining” steps

This scaffolding is visible on nearly every page, especially the 10-step cycle on page 8 of the Visual Plain Language Guide.

4. Iterating through testing and feedback

Just as step 10 of the guide emphasizes Get Feedback (page 27), I moved through several cycles of:

• testing concepts with writers and editors

• adjusting language

• simplifying visuals

• refining metaphors

• tweaking contrast and spacing

Each iteration made the guide more coherent, lighter, and more intuitively navigable.

Why the Guide Looks Playful

Plain language can feel rigid or even simplistic. I wanted to challenge that perception.

That’s why the guide uses:

• rounded icons, not rigid lines
• asymmetric silhouettes, giving movement and energy
• vivid colors that signal friendliness
• visual metaphors that feel human, like the helping hand or warm lightbulb

This visual tone embodies the empathy at the heart of plain language (step 8, page 23).

Icon System Inside Visual Plain Language Guide

Here are the icons for each of the ten steps of the Visual Plain Language Guide.

What the Visual Plain Language Guide Aims to Do

Ultimately, the guide is meant to:

• make plain language principles more teachable

• help teams create better documents, services, and policies

• support trust, clarity, and usability (page 29)

• show that communication can be both rigorous and inviting

In other words, the guide exists to turn the journey from ideas to results (page 33) into something clearer, lighter, and more human.

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The word “grammar” refers both to the rules that govern language production and comprehension and to the study of those rules. As the set of rules and principles governing the use of language, grammar is as old as the oldest of languages!

As the study of the rules, it has a long history. The oldest grammar studies come from ancient India, centuries before our common era, and deal with the rules of the Sanskrit language. The most recognized Sanskrit grammarian was Panini, whose ideas about grammar are still used today! In Europe, grammar emerged as a discipline in Greece, with authors like Aristarchus of Samothrace, who baptized it “the art of letters.” In Ancient Rome, Latin grammar was developed based on Greek ideas, and became a pillar of the the art of eloquence, with rhetoric and dialectics (taught alongside the art of numbers).

The Birth of Spanish

Nebrija’s Grammar

Throughout the Middle Ages, various factors contributed to the birth of Romance languages, including Spanish. Among these factors, the strict grammatical prescriptions of classical Latin drove a wedge between the language of scholars and the vulgar or popular Latin spoken by uneducated people. Also, the new geopolitical conditions of a fragmented empire furthered a linguistic fracture that gradually gave rise to heterogeneous (region-specific), although interrelated, vernacular languages.

In Spain, a variety of Romance languages coexisted for centuries, including Galician, Castilian, Leonese, Catalan, and Asturian. At the end of the XI century, a process of linguistic reunification began thanks to the rise of Spanish as the language for the chansons de geste. These epic poems served as example, inspiration, and entertainment, much as the heroes and stories in today’s Marvel movies. In the second half of the XIII century, during the reign of Alfonso X of Castile and Leon, Spanish acquired official status. The king had all official documents written directly in Castilian or translated into Castilian, rather than having them in Latin, as it had been the custom until then.

The political rise of the new languages inspired the interest to study them in their own right. The Sevillian Antonio de Nebrija was the first scholar of Romance languages to understand the importance of writing down their rules. Thus, in 1492, he published in Salamanca his Gramática de la lengua castellana, which is not only the first book on the grammar of the Spanish language, but also the first book on any Romance language at all. In the prologue to Queen Elizabeth the Catholic, he states:

“When I think to myself, my enlightened queen: […] and I put before my eyes all that has been written for our memory and remembrance, one thing I find and I draw to a certain conclusion: that the [Latin] language was always a companion of the [Roman] empire; such was their association that together they rose, grew, and flourished, and later together they fell […] And because my thought and will have always been to magnify the achievements of our nation, and to give the men of my language books to make the best use of their leisure […], I decided before all other things to lay down the art of our Castilian language. Thereby, what is henceforth written in our language may remain in a style and endure the test of time, as has been done with Greek and Latin, for the study of their art has allowed them, through the many centuries of their existence, to endure in their uniformity.”

(My translation.)

Spanish Sets Sail

Bilingual exchange between a native and a missionary

It may not escape the reader that that same year of 1492, Christopher Columbus was authorized by the Catholic Monarchs to seek new trade routes to the Indies across the Atlantic. Spain, like many previous kingdoms, sought to expand its power. During this expansion, the discovery and subsequent conquest of a new continent led to the spread of Castilian as a lingua franca.

However, the process of Castilianization was much slower than the geopolitical and religious expansion. This expansion was accelerated by the papal concession of lands to the kingdoms of Spain and Portugal as vicars of the Catholic god. Spain claimed vast territories of the Americas as their own (aided by the Tordesilles Treaty that delineated the claiming rights of Spain and Portugal.) As a result of these territorial claims, the indigenous people already living in the Americas were deemed subjects of the crown: they had to be christened and taxed.

The task of communicating with the natives fell mainly on the missionaries. In their quest to convert the natives to their faith, the missionaries also spoke up for native rights. To a great extent, the missionaries advocated for the use of native languages, and were devoted to developing teaching materials, such as grammars and bilingual glossaries. A famous sermon given before Christmas in 1511 by Antonio de Montesinos, exhorts:

“Are they not men? Do they not have rational souls? Are you not bound to love them as you love yourselves? How can you lie in such lethargic slumber? Rest assured that in your present state, you can no more be saved than the Moors or the Turks who have no want or fear for the faith of Jesus Christ.”

(My translation.)

Montesino’s sermon ignited a fierce debate over native rights and identity, and led Spaniards to initially adopt bilingualism for economic and religious gain. They had the help of an invaluable group of native speakers of aboriginal languages, who were often the product of slavery or miscegenation and became interpreters by necessity.

However, communicating amidst the linguistic diversity of the New World’s native languages proved quite difficult. The scarce number of Castilian-speakers and the difficulties of the terrain added to the diversity of native languages led the missionaries to favor Nahuatl over other languages. In 1570, to overcome the problems that linguistic variety posed while “respecting” the right to a native language, King Philip II decreed Nahuatl as the official language of the Viceroyalty of New Spain — officially created in 1535. This imposition proved unsustainable, as it was a foreign language for both the Spaniards and many of the native peoples.

In 1696, King Charles II established Spanish as the only official language of the Viceroyalty. In this way, Spanish became the first modern European language to be massively taught as a second language. Bilingualism persisted in the home, while Spanish quickly spread to all aspects of public and political life.

Spanish in the Americas

Bello’s Grammar of 1847

The Spanish of the criollos, native Spanish-speakers born in America, was, by the end of the seventeenth century, its own version of peninsular Spanish. This Creole Spanish had developed on the basis of southern Andalusian phonetics, with seseo (lack of distinction between /s/ and /th/) and the fall of the final consonants (as in /usté/ instead of /usted/); the inclusion of indigenous words, such as maíz (corn), maní (peanut), huracán (hurricane) and chocolate; and the Sevillian syntax, which incorporated the use of ustedes (informal plural for you) to the detriment of vosotros (formal plural for you.)

Faced with a new transcontinental linguistic reality, the Real Academia Española was founded in 1713, “to cultivate and solidify in any possible way the purity and elegance of the Castilian language” through the creation of a dictionary, “the most copious that could be created”.

For more than a century, American Spanish had a submissive place to Peninsular Spanish until 1847. That year, the Venezuelan scholar Andrés Bello wrote his Grammar of the Castilian Language Intended for the Use of Americans. Understanding that “each language has its genius, its physiognomy, its twists”, Bello took on the task of describing based on observations the innovative identity of American Spanish.

“I did not want […] to rely on authorities, because for me the only unimpeachable language is language itself. […] The prodigious advancement of all science and art, the spread of intellectual culture, and the political revolutions of our time call every day for new signs that express new ideas.”

(My translation.)

Bello’s intention was not to “write for the Castilians,” meaning European Spaniards, but rather to bring together in language all of the young American nations where SPanish was spoken. This goal was faithful to Nebrija’s ideal of avoiding linguistic fragmentation (especially in syntax), considered a sign of cultural and political weakening. In the Prologue to his Grammar, he explained his animosity towards changes in syntax:

“[…]the greatest of all evils, and the one that, if it unchecked, will deny us of the priceless advantages of a common language, is that of new structures. It already floods and muddies much of what is written in America. Liberties of construction alter the structure of the language, turning it into a multitude of irregular, licentious, and barbarian dialects. As embryos of future languages, the belabored transformations of these language-lings would replicate in America the dark era of the corruption of Latin in Europe. Chile, Peru, Buenos Aires, and Mexico would each speak their own language, or rather, several languages, as happens in Spain, Italy, and France.”

(My translation.)

In pursuit of the unity of language and, more specifically, of the homogenization of syntax, Bello used as his model the Spanish of “educated people.” These were speakers who, because they had had access to formal education, shared a mutually comprehensible language even when they lived in very distant regions. He shared this rationale in the preface to his Grammar:

“This use is preferred because it is the most uniform in the various provinces and towns that speak the same language, and therefore the one that makes what is said easier and more often understood. In contrast, the words and phrases of uneducated people vary greatly from one town and province to another, and are not easily understood outside that narrow environment in which they were born.”
(My translation.)

In the late 19th century, awareness about American Spanish led to the creation of national language academies in the New World. The first one to be founded was the Colombian Language Academy in 1871. Today, there are 22 national academies: in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Spain, the United States, Uruguay and Venezuela. These 22 academies collaborate in the Association of Spanish Language Academies (ASALE), which was founded in 1951 at the behest of the then President of Mexico, Miguel Alemán Valdés, in order to work towards the unity of language as cultural heritage.

Pan-Hispanic Spanish

At the beginning of the 21st century, almost a century after the last grammar published by the Royal Academy in 1931, ASALE brought together scholars from all over the Spanish-speaking world to create the first consensual pan-Hispanic grammar. More than a hundred scholars collaborated in the new grammar with the aim of describing the grammatical constructions typical of Spanish in general, while giving an account of the phonological, morphological, and syntactic variants from different areas. In 2009, the new grammar of the Spanish language, Nueva gramática de la lengua española, was officially launched under the slogan “the grammar that makes us”. The work has three volumes, one on morphology, one on syntax, and one on phonetics and phonology, as well as a DVD of voices of Spanish for educational purposes, gathering the diversity of the language “from the mouths of speakers in all linguistic areas”.

According to a recent study based on data collected from Twitter messages, it can still be said that three large Spanish-speaking regions endure, reflecting patterns of colonial settlement that developed differences specific to each region. The Iberian Peninsula is the original region, the Central American Caribbean region, along with Mexico and Peru, make up the second region, and finally, the Southern Cone is the third region. To these, we should perhaps add today the United States as the youngest region, a melting pot of Spanish dialects where speakers from the three previous regions converge.

Spanish Around the World

Did you know that Spanish is one of the most spoken languages in the world? With about 580 million speakers, it is only second to Mandarin Chinese as mother tongue (and Mandarin Chinese might be better defined as a set of mutually intelligible dialects). English is the most spoken language as a second language. Spanish is also one of the six official languages of the United Nations and one of the most studied as a foreign language.

Spanish is the official language in 20 countries in the Americas, one in Europe and two in Africa, by declaration or adoption in governmental institutions, as in the case of Argentina. More than 400 million native Spanish-speakers live in the Americas, from Argentina and Chile to Canada and the United States. The US, it bears mentioning, with some 55 million Spanish speakers, has become the second Spanish-speaking country in the world, after Mexico, despite Spanish not being an official Spanish language.

Spanish is also the official language in the African nations of Equatorial Guinea and the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic and is spoken in Cameroon, Nigeria, Gabon, Morocco, Angola, Turkey, Israel, Philippines, Brazil, and several islands in Oceania.

Historia del español y su gramática

La gramática y su estudio

La palabra “gramática” se refiere tanto a las normas que rigen la producción y comprensión del idioma, como a su estudio. Entendida como conjunto de reglas y principios que gobiernan el uso de una lengua concreta, ¡la gramática es tan antigua como la más antigua de las lenguas!

En tanto estudio de las reglas, tiene una historia milenaria. Las gramáticas más antiguas que se conocen provienen de la antigua India, y tratan de las reglas del idioma sánscrito. El gramático indio más reconocido fue Panini, cuya obra, escrita en el siglo IV AEC, ¡estableció conceptos aún utilizados hoy en día! En el mundo occidental, la gramática surgió como disciplina en Grecia, con varios autores, entre ellos Aristarco de Samotracia, quien la bautizó “el arte de las letras”. En la Antigua Roma, la gramática latina se desarrolló con base en los preceptos griegos, y se convirtió en uno de los pilares de la enseñanza de las artes de la elocuencia, con la retórica y la dialéctica (impartidas junto a las artes de los números).

El nacimiento del español

A lo largo de la Edad Media, diversos factores contribuyeron al surgimiento de lenguas romances (también denominadas románicas o neolatinas), entre ellas, el español. La estricta prescripción gramatical del latín clásico —ya diferenciado del latín vulgar o popular— y las nuevas condiciones geopolíticas de un imperio fragmentado fomentaron una fractura lingüística que, paulatinamente, dio origen a lenguas vernáculas heterogéneas (específicas de cada región), aunque interrelacionadas.

En España, donde coexistían diversas lenguas romances —como el gallego, el castellano, el catalán, el leonés y el asturiano— comenzó a fines del siglo XI un proceso de reunificación lingüística gracias a la difusión del español como la lengua de los cantares de gesta (que servían de ejemplo e inspiración, lo mismo que las historias de los superhéroes de hoy). Durante el reinado de Alfonso X de Castilla y León, el español adquirió estatus oficial, ya que el rey hizo redactar directamente en castellano o traducir a éste, y no al latín, como hasta entonces, todos los documentos oficiales.

Junto al ascenso político de las nuevas lenguas, surgió la necesidad de estudiarlas en derecho propio. El sevillano Antonio de Nebrija fue el primer estudioso de lenguas romances en comprender la importancia de asentar por escrito la gramática de las nuevas lenguas. Así, en 1492, publicó en Salamanca su Gramática de la lengua castellana, que no sólo es el primer tratado de gramática de la lengua española, sino también el primer tratado impreso de una lengua romance. En el prólogo a la Reina Isabel la Católica, indica:

Cuando bien conmigo pienso, muy esclarecida reina: […] y pongo delante de los ojos todas las cosas que para nuestra recordación y memoria quedaron escritas, una cosa hallo y saco por conclusión muy cierta: que siempre la lengua [latina] fue compañera del imperio [romano]; y de tal manera lo siguió, que juntamente comenzaron, crecieron, y florecieron, y después junta fue la caída de entrambos […] Y porque mi pensamiento y voluntad siempre fue engrandecer las cosas de nuestra nación, y dar a los hombres de mi lengua obras en que mejor puedan emplear su ocio […], acordé ante todas las otras cosas asentar el arte de este nuestro lenguaje castellano, para que lo que de ahora en adelante en él se escribiere pueda quedar en un estilo, y extenderse en toda la duración de los tiempos que están por venir, como vemos que se ha hecho en la lengua griega y latina, las cuales por haber sido estudiadas en su arte, aunque sobre ellas han pasado muchos siglos, todavía perduran en su uniformidad.

(Nebrija, 1492. Gramática.
Adaptación del español antiguo, hecha por la autora)

Ese mismo año, Cristóbal Colón recibió la autorización de los Reyes Católicos para buscar nuevas rutas mercantiles a las Indias por el Atlántico. España, como muchos reinos anteriores, buscaba expandir su poder. Durante esta expansión, el descubrimiento y posterior conquista de un nuevo continente propiciaron la difusión del castellano como lengua franca.

Sin embargo, el largo proceso de castellanización iniciado por los conquistadores fue mucho más lento que la expansión geopolítica y religiosa. Como consecuencia de la concesión papal de tierras al reino de España, en tanto vicario del dios católico, se consideró a los indígenas súbditos de la corona, a quienes había que cristianizar y cobrar impuestos. La tarea de comunicación, eminentemente lingüística, recayó sobre los misioneros, quienes en gran medida abogaron por el uso de las lenguas nativas, y se abocaron al desarrollo de materiales pedagógicos, como gramáticas y glosarios bilingües. En un principio, fueron los españoles quienes adoptaron el bilingüismo para provecho económico y religioso, no sin la ayuda de un grupo invaluable de hablantes nativos de las lenguas aborígenes, que se convirtieron en intérpretes y eran a menudo producto de la esclavitud o el mestizaje. Sin embargo, la comunicación con grupos lingüísticos tan diversos era muy dificultosa. En pos de paliar esta situación sin dejar de “respetar” el uso de idiomas nativos, en 1570, el rey Felipe II decretó el náhuatl como lengua oficial de Virreinato de la Nueva España (creado en 1535). Esta imposición resultó insostenible, ya que se trataba de una lengua extranjera tanto para los españoles como para muchos pueblos nativos. En 1696, el rey Carlos II estableció el español como único idioma oficial del virreinato.  De esta manera, el español se convirtió en la primera lengua europea moderna en enseñarse masivamente como segundo idioma.

El español de las Américas

El español de los criollos, hispanohablantes nativos nacidos en América, era, para finales del siglo XVII, una versión del español peninsular con características propias. El español criollo se había desarrollado con base en la fonética meridional andaluza (con el seseo y la caída de las consonantes finales como en /usté/), la inclusión de indigenismos (como maíz, maní, huracán y chocolate) y la sintaxis sevillana (que incorporó el uso de usted/ustedes en detrimento del vos/vosotros) [i].

De cara a una nueva realidad lingüística transcontinental, en 1713 se fundó en España la Real Academia Española, “para cultivar y fijar en el modo posible la pureza y elegancia de la lengua castellana” mediante la creación de un diccionario, “el más copioso que pudiere hacerse”.

Durante más de un siglo, el español americano ocupó un lugar sumiso frente al peninsular, hasta que en 1847 el estudioso venezolano Andrés Bello escribió su Gramática de la lengua castellana destinada al uso de los americanos. Entendiendo que “cada lengua tiene su genio, su fisonomía, sus giros”, Bello se abocó a la tarea de darle al español americano su identidad innovadora basándose en la observación.

No he querido […] apoyarme en autoridades, porque para mí la sola irrecusable en lo tocante a una lengua es la lengua misma. […] El adelantamiento prodigioso de todas las ciencias y las artes, la difusión de la cultura intelectual y las revoluciones políticas, piden cada día nuevos signos para expresar ideas nuevas.

(Bello, 1847, Gramática)

Bello no pretendía “escribir para los castellanos” (refiriéndose a los españoles de la península), pero sí apuntaba a la unificación de la lengua en las nacientes naciones americanas, retomando la idea de Nebrija de evitar la fragmentación lingüística (sobre todo desde el punto de vista sintáctico) por ser signo de debilitamiento cultural y político. En el Prólogo de su Gramática explicó su animosidad a los cambios sintácticos:

[…] el mayor mal de todos, y el que, si no se ataja, va a privarnos de las inapreciables ventajas de un lenguaje común, es la avenida de neologismos de construcción, que inunda y enturbia mucha parte de lo que se escribe en América, y alterando la estructura del idioma, tiende a convertirlo en una multitud de dialectos irregulares, licenciosos, bárbaros; embriones de idiomas futuros, que durante una larga elaboración reproducirían en América lo que fue la Europa en el tenebroso período de la corrupción del latín. Chile, el Perú, Buenos Aires, México, hablarían cada uno su lengua, o por mejor decir, varias lenguas, como sucede en España, Italia y Francia.

En pos de la unidad del idioma y, más específicamente, de la homogeneización de la sintaxis, Bello usó como modelo el español de la “gente educada”, que por tener acceso a una educación formal compartía la lengua aun estando en regiones muy alejadas, lo que promovía la comprensión.

Se prefiere este uso porque es el más uniforme en las varias provincias y pueblos que hablan una misma lengua, y por lo tanto el que hace que más fácil y generalmente se entienda lo que se dice; al paso que las palabras y frases propias de la gente ignorante varían mucho de unos pueblos y provincias a otros, y no son fácilmente entendidas fuera de aquel estrecho recinto en que las usa el vulgo.

(Bello, “Nociones preliminares”, Gramática, 1847)

La concientización sobre el español americano llevó hacia fines del siglo XIX a la creación de academias nacionales del idioma, la primera de las cuales fue la Academia Colombiana de la Lengua, fundada en 1871. Hoy en día existen 22 academias nacionales (en Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, España, Estados Unidos, Filipinas, Guatemala, Honduras, México, Nicaragua, Panamá, Paraguay, Perú, Puerto Rico, República Dominicana, Uruguay y Venezuela). Las 22 academias colaboran en la Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (ASALE), que fue fundada en 1951 a instancias del entonces Presidente de México, Miguel Alemán Valdés, a fin de trabajar en pos de la unidad del idioma como patrimonio cultural.

El español panhispánico

A principios del siglo XXI, casi un siglo después de la última gramática publicada por la Real Academia en 1931, ASALE reunió a estudiosos de todo el mundo hispanohablante para crear la primera gramática panhispánica consensuada. Colaboraron en la nueva gramática más de un centenar de estudiosos con el objetivo de describir las construcciones gramaticales propias del español en general, y al mismo tiempo dar cuenta de las variantes fonológicas, morfológicas y sintácticas propias de las diversas zonas. En 2009, se presentó oficialmente, bajo el lema “la gramática que somos”, la Nueva gramática de la lengua española. La obra cuenta con tres tomos sobre morfología, sintaxis y fonética y fonología, así como un DVD de voces del español con fines didácticos, que recoge la diversidad del idioma “en boca de hablantes de todas las áreas lingüísticas”.

Según un reciente estudio realizado con base en datos recogidos en mensajes de Twitter, se puede decir que siguen existiendo tres grandes regiones hispanohablantes, que reflejan en parte los patrones de asentamiento colonial, y muestran divergencias internas propias a cada región. La península ibérica constituye el conglomerado original, la región centroamericana del Caribe, junto a México y Perú, conforman el segundo conglomerado, y, finalmente, el Cono Sur constituye el conglomerado más joven. A esto debemos quizás hoy agregar el crisol de dialectos en el que se ha convertido Estados Unidos, donde confluyen hablantes de las tres regiones anteriores.

Hoy en día hay unos 500 millones de hispanohablantes en el mundo. ¡El español es la una de las lenguas más habladas en el mundo como lengua materna![ii] El español es además uno de los seis idiomas oficiales de las Naciones Unidas[iii]. Más de 400 millones de hispanohablantes habitan países donde el español es la lengua oficial (por declaración o adopción en las instituciones gubernamentales), y unos 75 millones habitan en países donde el español no es reconocido como lengua oficial (como en Estados Unidos o Brasil). De la totalidad de hablantes de la lengua española, 90 por ciento reside en países americanos, de Argentina y Chile a Canadá y Estados Unidos.

En Estados Unidos, el español es la segunda lengua materna del país, con casi 40 millones de hablantes[iv]. Sin embargo, muchos de ellos no han tenido acceso al tipo de educación a la que se refirió Bello, y han adquirido su idioma sólo en forma oral y sin instrucción formal. Otro aspecto del español estadounidense es que existe una gran diversidad dialectal, poco estudiada.

A pesar de que el español no es un idioma oficial en Estados Unidos, muchos organismos oficiales, organizaciones no gubernamentales y empresas privadas hacen traducir gran cantidad de documentos al español[v]. Lamentablemente, no siempre las traducciones están en manos de profesionales capacitados, y esto ha hecho que muchos textos estén muy mal traducidos o escritos en un español que resulta, en la práctica, ininteligible. ¡Es esto lo que queremos evitar! Debemos reconocer también el trabajo incansable que muchos y muy buenos traductores han brindado en los diversos ámbitos mencionados, y la colaboración que se está forjando entre el gobierno y la Academia Norteamericana de la Lengua, especialmente en lo referente a consultas sobre el sitio web GobiernoUSA.gov.

En pos de la comunicación

Este post se publicó originalmente en Al rescate del español (ex Cuatro mosqueteras) el 28 de junio de 2016. con el deseo de dar acceso a los hispanohablantes estadounidenses a nociones de gramática y escritura tendientes a la comunicación eficaz.

Sigue siendo mi deseo aydar a transmitir un mensaje claro, en el que el escritor diga realmente lo que quiere decir, sin los malentendidos ni la confusión que llevan a aclaraciones, afrentas y altercados innecesarios. El trabajo en pos de la comunicación clara apunta a cumplir con el deseo de Nebrija de escribir correctamente para nosotros y para nuestro porvenir, teniendo en cuenta nuestras circunstancias.

Notas

[i] Derivado de “vuestra merced”. Una consecuencia importante del reajuste pronominal fue la diferenciación regional entre zonas con tuteo (uso de tú) y zonas con voseo (uso de vos) para la forma familiar de segunda persona del singular en América, y la distinción con España en la segunda persona del plural (en América se usa “ustedes” tanto formal como informalmente, mientras que España se distingue entre “ustedes” y “vosotros”).

[ii] El libro de datos de la Agencia Central de Inteligencia considera al español como segunda lengua materna del mundo, detrás del chino mandarín, y delante del inglés, aunque el inglés es la lengua franca moderna con la mayor cantidad de hablantes como segunda lengua.

[iii] Los cinco restantes son, en orden alfabético árabe, chino, francés, inglés y ruso.

[iv] Según una investigación del Pew Research Center del año 2013.

[v] Una tendencia que se inició con la promulgación de la Ley de Derechos Civiles en 1964 (que promueve la traducción de información destinada a los ciudadanos y residentes del país, en reconocimiento de las necesidades de las minorías).

References / Bibliografía

BELLO, Andrés. 1847. Gramática de la lengua castellana destinada al uso de los americanos. Edición digital a partir de Obras completas. Tomo Cuarto, 3ªed., Caracas, La Casa de Bello, 1995. http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/portales/andres_bello/obra-visor-din/gramatica-gramatica-de-la-lengua-castellana-destinada-al-uso-de-los-americanos–0/html/ff6ef310-82b1-11df-acc7-002185ce6064_44.html. Consulta del 27/2/16.

BRAVO, Eva. “Rasgos de procedencia andaluza en la variedad americana”. Español de América. http://www.xn--espaoldeamerica-1qb.com/rasgos-de-procedencia-andaluza-en-la-variedad-americana/. Consulta del 27/2/16.

CIFUENTES, Bárbara. 1998. Letras sobre voces: multilingüismo a través de la historia. México. Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social e Instituto Nacional Indigenista.

DE NEBRIJA, Antonio. 1492. Gramática de la lengua castellana. http://www.filos.unam.mx/LICENCIATURA/Pagina_FyF_2004/ introduccion/Gramatica_Nebrija.pdf. Consulta del 3/5/16.

Estatutos de la Real Academia Española. Estatutos_1715.pdf. http://www.rae.es/la-institucion/organizacion/estatutos. Consulta del 3/7/16.

FRAGO GRACIA, Jose Antonio. Historia del español de América. Madrid, Gredos.

GONÇALVES, Bruno y SÁNCHEZ, David. “Crowdsourcing Dialect Characterization through Twitter”. PlosONE. http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0112074. 19 de noviembre de 2014. Consulta del 3/5/16.

GONZALEZ-BARRERA, Ana y HUGO LOPEZ, Mark. “Spanish is the most spoken non‑English language in U.S. homes, even among non-Hispanics.” http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/08/13/spanish-is-the-most-spoken-non-english-language-in-u-s-homes-even-among-non-hispanics/. 13 de agosto 2013. Consulta del 3/10/16.

Languages. The World Factbook. Central Intelligence Agency. https://www.cia.gov/Library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2098.html. S.f. Consulta del 2/10/16.

MARIMÓN LLORCA, Carmen. “El español en América: de la conquista a la Época Colonial”. http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/obra-visor/el-espaol-en-amrica-de-la-conquista-a-la-poca-colonial-0/html/00f4b922-82b2-11df-acc7-002185ce6064_2.html. S.f. Consulta del 2/14/16.

KRAMER, Samuel Noah. (1988). History Begins at Sumer: Thirty-Nine Firsts in Recorded History. Philadelphia, PA. University of Pennsylvania Press. (3^ra ed.)

Translation:

You have filled my heart with emotion, tears are welling up in my eyes! What clarity you have poured into this article! What a way to weave one stage into the next in the evolution of the Spanish language without falling prey to the spider’s web of “historicism” but rather giving it a modern, fresh, and clear take. Congratulations! You don’t know how pleased I am to embark on this project in the company of someone with your vision!

In a white paper titled “Successfully Authoring and Translating Plain Language Summaries,” Lionbridge provides a lot of useful information about how to develop and localize clinical trial summaries in plain language. However, Lionbridge got something very wrong. The image above, used to explain plain language summaries in their white paper, shows how Lionbridge pits science writing against plan language. But, science language and plain language are NOT linguistic opposites. Clarity and elegance are the goal in both technical and lay communication.

The antagonist view in Lionbridge’s white paper perpetuates the misconception that science is obscure. Nothing is further from the truth. Science is about transparency, about sharing ideas, methods, and results in valid and replicable ways.

Construing plain language in this way also perpetuates the misconception that plain language is solely about engaging low literacy or disabled readers. Plain language is about clarity, about sharing ideas, explanations, and opinions in logical and coherent ways, no matter who the audience is.

Yes, attention to the audience is one of the pillars of plain language, that’s where adequacy strategies come in: adapting a message for specific purposes and readerships. But plain language is also about textuality: building meaning in the most coherent, succinct, clear, and complete way possible. Textuality applies to all types of text. And while we’re at it, plain language also includes accessibility strategies to help with text is written for readers with disabilities, both physical or cognitive.

Plain language initiatives emerged to address the gobbledygook of bureaucratic and legalistic jargon and verbosity. In the public sector, plain language streamlined citizen access to government information about social benefits. In the private sector, plain language ensured consumer access to information about the safety and quality of products and services. Those were foundational steps in XX century plain language writing. Today, plain language is required in every field, perhaps particularly in science communications between scientists, with the public, and with our policimakers. The NSF estimates that 50% of major bills contain a major scientific and technical component.

Of course, the push for clarity has a long history. In the XV century, King Henry V advocated for English as plain language when he used it in his official communications, preferring to the French and Latin used by government bureaucrats. In the XII century, King Alphonse the Wise had made the same plea for Spanish. In the very first century of our common era, Quintilian, a Roman educator and rhetorician from Hispania and forefather of modern pedagogy, wrote about clarity with style:

“Do not simply promote understanding, prevent misunderstanding…
And, in matters of style, indulge in elegance,
for a writer wins but trivial praise if he gives no more than clarity:
his text seems free from weakness rather than full of strength.”

No one in the plain language community will tell you that plain language is restricted to a certain audience, purpose, or genre. Plain language is about clearing things up, everywhere. Plain language is not a list of dos and donts to mask symptoms. Plain language is an approach to communication for every audience, purpose, and genre. When I teach, I call this approach Plain Language 2.0, to emphasize the idea that a simplistic view of plain language is a disservice to clear communication.

It is true that a great deal of scientific writing is incomprehensible even to specialists in the discipline. Science (and other) writers may draft obscure text on purpose in search of prestige or deception. That is not true scientific writing, it is deceiving writing. Obscure writers mask their own ignorance with meaningless fanfare or try to avoid criticism with convoluted text. Nothing lends itself to discussion better than a clearly expressed thought. Inexperienced writers, too, use confusing syntax and vocabulary to give an appearance of intelligence. Unfortunately, voluntary gibberish has two equally dangerous consequences: bad ideas survive under the cloak of gibberish and good ideas perish.

So, no, scientific writing and plain language are not linguistic opposites. Obscure scientific writing is simply a token of non-plain writing, and, as with all obscure language, we must counteract it with clarity.

I include two examples of texts about the same topics, one written for experts and the other one for lay audiences. You will see that in each case, the obscurity does not stem from complex words or structure alone. It also stems from faulty grammar, mismatched temporal references, and poor logical connections.

Please, help me spread the word: Plain language is for everyone, laymen and specialists alike!

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!

As a plain language expert helping content providers improve their communication by using reader-centered techniques (both for expert and lay readers) I am often asked, how do you know it works?

Here are a few journeys from convoluted to plain language that have a proven record of success!

1) Simplified EULAs and TOCs

An End-User License Agreement is a contract to give the user the right to use a software application in some way. The Terms of Service are set of rules a provider attaches to a software service or web product. Most users agree to these before using the service or product without even reading them and can fall prey to them. Buried in the legalese are terms like “do not criticize the product publicly” or “using this service means you will be monitored”—some of which have been upheld in court.

The drive to protect consumer privacy and provide accessible, understandable, and actionable content, has led some organizations to use plain language to create simplified EULAs and TOCs.

This is a before and after example from 500pix, a photo-sharing platform, that shares the legalese and the boiled-down version of their TOC. Just in case, they’re quick to point out that “The column on the right provides a short explanation of the terms of use and is not legally binding.” But, when there has been disputes about user conduct, that right column is an easy reference to ground the discussion and sort behaviors that may be grounds for suspension or termination of an account, or other steps.

2) A Letter from the US Department of Veterans Affairs

This project was undertaken by the VA regional offices in Jackson, Mississippi, and Little Rock, Arkansas years ago, but it continues to have results today. It involved redrafting a latter sent out to veterans who were seeking benefits.

The before version of the letter was revised using veterans input and the results of the change were measured. Results for the old letter were estimated as a composite of each counselor working with this letter, at 750 letters sent out and some 1,150 calls received. The new letter was sent out 710 times and only 192 calls were received, asking for clarifications or help in complying with the requirements. The estimated savings for this single letter used nationwide amounted to more than $40,000 a year. And remember that the VA sends out thousands of letters.

3) A Promissory Note at Citi Bank

An effort that is still under development: redrafting of financial documents for clarity. At one point, Citi Bank shocked the financial sector by redrafting a promissory note and reducing it from 3000 to 600 words.

In the process, senior management discovered to what extent the dense legalese hid a slew of sneaky provisions that deceitfully tipped the scale in favor of the bank’s. Among the worst practice were “confessions of judgment” which allowed the bank to garnish a delinquent borrower’s salary without even going to court to prove a breach of contract and a provision that prevented the opposite (the bank paying the borrowers legal fees if they won).

The choice, according Duncan MacDonald, a lawyer at Citi at the time, was to either “get rid of the bad stuff or expose it in plain language for the world to see” They did both, by the way, prompted by former Miss America Bess Myerson, who had become an icon of consumer advocacy!  Here’s an excerpt of the before and after. The result of this single note was increased payment compliance, competitive advantages and lost opportunities lawsuits, less collection problems and lawsuits. Exactly the opposite of what had been predicted by most of the bank’s lawyers.

This gave plain language momentum, but perhaps not enough: If this had stuck, plain language across the board could have, as a strategy, prevented the amalgam of eerie instruments that led to the Great Recession!

4) Extra: I’m a technical writer and translator, so, I’ll share this one two: Technical writers at General Electric Information Services write the manuals for the company’s software. The company redrafted some in plain language and compared calls for support: The new version resulted in 125 less calls per month than the old version. After calculating the cost of the calls, the company concluded that it saves up to $375,000 a year when customers use the new version.

The Bottom Line

People want to understand your product or service, they are tired of gimmicks. Avoid fallacies that mesmerize at first but quickly smell like rotten eggs: For instance,

-The “appeal to authority,” the fallacy that something is good because a person of authority or status does or uses it.

-The “just in case” fallacy that presents a worst-case scenario rather than the most  probable one.

-The “bandwagon fallacy” that implies that if everyone is doing it, you should too. Your products and services are better than that.

Use the principles of plain language in your writing: relevance, clarity, adequacy, accessibility, actionability, and accuracy. If you provide your users with accurate and actionable content, they will become your biggest fans!

When I am away on business, I miss my family. Tremendously. (And yes, I also miss them on the rare occasion I am away for fun!) But I can also focus on my work.

I was recently asked about making the most out of a business trip,  I realized that I approach a business stay-away the same way I approach writing: I plan, then I draft and adjust.

The planning: When I arrive at the hotel, planning involves setting up the room “on purpose,” so I’ll know what side of the bed I’m waking up on, where my paperwork will live during my stay, how to turn lights on and off, etc. I also find a makeshift yoga mat, like a towel or extra blanket–or ask for a real one (some hotels offer them!): every night like clockwork (although the time may vary between 9 pm and 1 am in the morning), I’ll do a quick yoga stretch. Sometimes it’s 5 minutes; sometimes, 20. Really fast, but grounded. It realigns my body, so I can sleep better and perform the next day. My last setup step is finding drinking water if the room doesn’t offer it. Keeping hydrated is paramount!

The drafting and adjusting: In writing, a core aspect of meaning is what happens between the sentences. Of course, sentences have to be spot on for the reader to want to keep going, but the in between moments are magical. And you have to do a good deal of adjusting to get those right.

During a business trip, I have to be ready for my presentations, classes, or sessions. Sharing with others brings me joy. But what’s incredible about being away from home is also what you can learn and experience in between the pre-scheduled times and after hours. I do one of three things:

• If time is limited, I simply roam the space and greet people. Sometimes, serendipitously; others, trying to find those I want to network with. If I’m at a conference, for instance, it’s easy to tell who’s attending from badges. If I’m at a client’s facility, there’s usually a hangout spot or a nearby café where I can meet people who work outside “my department.” I have met fabulous new friends and colleagues this way.
• I look for built-in opportunities to sight-see. I was recently in Oslo, and while I did not have a lot of free time, I was able to stretch a lunch break to two hours and take a walking tour of the city. Once, in Rome, I had to wait hours for my flight, and although I know the city quite well, I decided to hire a veteran driver who gave me a unique view of the places he grew up in! The first time I went to DC, I hopped on a city touring bus, and although I didn’t get to do a lot of hopping off, it gave me a birdseye view of the city and I could take mental notes for places I wanted to return to.
• I am a tango enthusiast, so I bring my tango shoes wherever I go. Many times, I’m exhausted at night and dancing is the last thing in my mind. But I push myself to find an opportunity to dance a little, and, boy, does it pay off. It recharges my soul and clears my mind. In a recent trip to Palm Springs, after a packed day of work, I heard a guitar playing in the lobby of the hotel before catching my elevator. As it turned out, among the people enjoying the music was a fellow tango dancer, and a good dancer too! The guitar player took a break, we turned on tango music from our phones, and tangoed away!

Also, at some point during the day, which varies depending on time zones, I call home and drink up the voices of my kids and my husband. If time is tight, because I can only catch them in between activities, I try to ask one or two specific questions about their day. What was their last class at school? Do they have plans with a friend? How did the business call you were preparing for go?