Do your learners a favour: write like a human

Words are one of our most useful tools as designers of digital content. We could use them to show how knowledgeable and articulate we are or we could put ourselves in the learner’s shoes and communicate in a way that makes their job much easier. In this article, I will argue for the latter: plain, simple English, written by friendly, considerate people who want to help people learn.

People will learn better if you use plain English

The Plain English Campaign has been campaigning for crystal-clear communication since 1979. Sara Perkins explains: ‘There is plenty of evidence to support what common sense tells us anyway: that communications written in plain English are more successful than ones that baffle readers with verbiage and jargon. That does not mean you can’t use technical terms or long words, as long as you're confident your readership will understand them. But you still have to write clearly so you can be understood first time.'

You should use plain English whether your topic is technical or not, and whether your learners are beginners or advanced. It's a common fallacy that plain English means dumbing down your content for the sake of the ignorant, but in fact everyone benefits from simple language. Of course, you will need to use unfamiliar technical terms from time to time – just make sure you define them carefully and provide examples of how they should be used.

Note that plain English is not necessarily more colloquial, just simpler. You should be careful using colloquial expressions when communicating with people for whom English is a second language or who may have a different cultural background.

People will learn better if you use a friendly, conversational tone

The 'personalisation principle’ holds that you will achieve better results by adopting a friendly, conversational tone than you will with a more formal approach. Ruth Clark and Richard Mayer’s research demonstrated that learning improved when a conversational style was used, which they attributed to the fact that this more closely resembled a person-to-person interaction. They point out that text that uses a formal, impersonal, third-person style tends to make the author seem invisible, whereas a conversational style and the use of first-person narrative makes each learner feel as through the author is communicating directly with them.

Learning designer Cathy Moore has long railed against what she calls ‘corporate drone’, a formalised style often used in workplace learning materials, which comes over as impersonal, lacking in authenticity and un-engaging. Like Clark and Mayer, she argues that when you write learning content in a conversational style, there is a greater chance that the learner will react to the content as they would to a real teacher; in effect, the teacher communicates to them personally through the medium of the computer, much as they would face-to-face or through the pages of a book.

Researchers Clifford Nass and Byron Reeves argue that our interactions with computers are fundamentally social and natural, just like interactions in real life. We respond emotionally to the human characteristics exhibited by on-screen text and voiceover. Even though we know very well at an intellectual level that we are only interacting with software and not directly with a real person, emotionally it matters to us whether the software communicates with us in a polite and friendly manner.

Similarly, Mayer found that people learn better from a human voiceover, rather than one synthesised by a computer, further emphasising our desire for a more human relationship with our virtual teacher.

If you’re writing for voiceover, use the language that people use when they speak

Most of the time when we sit down and type at a computer, we’re doing this so someone else can read our words as text, either on-screen or in print. When writing a voiceover script, however, or one that will be spoken as dialogue by actors, we are writing words that will be spoken. And people do not speak the same way they write.

The trick is to write like you speak, as influential designer Connie Malamed explains: 'In most cases, writing for the ear is more informal than writing to be read. You may find that it improves your style if you imagine that you are speaking to someone while you are writing. When you write like you speak, you will naturally use shorter words, a more conversational tone and shorter sentences.'

The best way to tell whether you’re on the right track is to read your script out loud. If you struggle to articulate any of the words or have difficulty with your breathing, you definitely need to do more work. Keep going until you find the process effortless.

Do your learners a favour

In summary, the secret of good writing for learning content is to write like a human, not like an academic or a lawyer. At first you might find it challenging to remove your corporate mask and reveal yourself to your audience, but this is what you need to do if you’re going to be a successful writer.
A word of warning. While your learners will thank you for writing clearly, this can come at a cost in terms of your time and effort. As Blaise Pascal informed one of his correspondents in the 17th century: 'I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.'