I found this guide from Evolving Web on using plain language in communications to be insightful and nicely presented. The biggest takeaway for me was that plain language is inclusive – it’s actually an accessibility issue. This hadn’t occurred to me, even as someone who has always tried to promote and incorporate accessibility in anything digital that I have produced.
The guide is careful to note that this doesn’t mean dumbing it down. Making things too simplistic can actually obfuscate meaning. Randall Munroe’s Thing Explainer – wherein the author attempts to explain objects as complex as a Saturn V rocket, e.g., using only the 1,000 most common words in English – is an interesting exercise, but half the joy of reading it comes from already knowing what the things being described actually are. As an educational text, it fails to convey important distinctions, nuances and specifics.
Flowery or even convoluted prose may have its place in literary works, but even there it should be used as efficiently as possible to achieve its purpose. In a fiction writing class I recently took, the teacher stumped us when they asked if there was ever a reason not to use the most efficient way of expressing something. Have a grandiloquent character? Want to minutely describe every detail of the setting, or an action, a la Nicholson Baker? Fine, but you should still do it with the absolute minimum of words to convey that characterization or tone.
To get your message across, use the plainest language possible.
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