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Language

Our language confuses customers and us.

  • Government loves acronyms and confusing service names. It saves time if you are in the gang. It is awful if you are not
  • Everybody benefits from plain English and names that say what they do.

Good services are Verbs

Context of Use

This means Understanding your customers environment whilst they are trying to use our Services:

they might:

  • Be busy people who don’t want their time wasted
  • Have no previous business experience or business education
  • Have settled here from another country, so English may not be their first language
  • Be using a screen reader or other assistive technology
  • Have a disability that makes it difficult to read or understand written text. In fact, there’s a good chance of this for our audience – research shows that around 20% of entrepreneurs in the UK are dyslexic
  • Be accessing our services on a train, in a busy office, or while trying to feed the kids

This suggest that we write things in the most efficient and consumable manner

Plain English is the first thing to consider

Plain English

Write all our content in Plain English. This includes everything from service descriptions and business guides, to emails and application forms. Plain English is about writing clearly, concisely, and in everyday language. It includes:

  • Avoiding jargon and acronyms. If we need to use them, we’ll always explain what they mean first
  • Avoiding unnecessarily corporate or formal language. Instead of ‘Upon completion’, we would just say ‘When you’re finished’. Instead of ‘Applicants will receive communication by…’, we’ll just say ‘We’ll let you know by…’
  • Aiming to use the simplest version of a word. Why say ‘Obtain’ when we could just say ‘Get’?

Plain English makes it easier for everyone to read and understand our content. In fact, research shows that even highly educated experts prefer plain English. This means we don’t need to worry about putting off our users who may be highly experienced in business.

The Plain English Campaign has some really useful guides if you want to find out more about plain English.

Tone

Talking to people like they’re people

Try not to refer to our users as ‘businesses’ or ‘applicants’, but instead just say ‘you’. So instead of phrases like ‘Businesses can get support to’ , we’ll say ‘You can get support to’. And instead of ‘Applicants must upload evidence of’, we’ll say ‘You must upload evidence of’.

Using ‘you’ also helps to avoid passive sentences, which can come across as cold and corporate.

Keep sentences short and to the point

Try to keep our sentences short, and make sure they only cover one or two points. Long, trailing sentences that jump from point to point are difficult to scan and understand quickly. And for dyslexic users, users who don’t speak English as their first language, or users who are distracted and struggling to focus, they can be a real barrier.

But this can be a tricky one to get right. Shorter sentences are easier to read and understand, but too many short sentences together can feel like a robotic list of statements. We’re always aiming to get a good balance between short, simple sentences, and content that has good flow and rhythm. 

Bullet points are also a great way to break up long sentences or chunks of text.

Structuring and organising content

Human-centred content isn’t just about the words you use, but about how you structure and organise the information you’re giving.

Structure content in a logical way, putting the user and their journey first. Good structure considers:

  • How information is organised on a page. This could include using clear, descriptive headings, making use of design components like accordions, or following the inverted pyramid method
  • How content is organised across multiple pages or steps in a journey

Deliver the right information at the right time. Don't overwhelm users with every piece of information all at once.

Well-structured content doesn’t just make a simpler journey for our users – it also helps users who are using assistive technology. People using screen readers might skip through each heading to understand what the page is about and find something of interest. If our headings are unclear or not labelled correctly, these users might struggle to navigate the page.

Names of things

  • We name things according to OUR logic and terminology. Customers hate this
  • Customers want names "THAT MAKE SENSE TO THEM"

Quotes

Quote

Non-native English speakers might not use these words?