Plain English - How

General Principles

Edit your writing.

It is hard to write clearly. You have to work at it. Editing is harder work than writing. It takes three times as long. So write two thirds fewer sentences. But make them good ones. Take pride in your work. Be elegant.

Be self-critical.

We are lawyers: elegant writing doesn't come naturally to us. We had it trained out of us. The cultural weight of our education, training and professional development conditioned us to write in a certain way. To stop writing that way, we must be very self-critical.

Keep it positive

• Prefer positives to negatives.
• Avoid double negatives.
• Recoil in horror from triple negatives.

Enumerations

• Break into subparagraphs:
• Branch right, not left:

Style

• Use strong verbs, instead of modified weaker ones. Prefer "bellowed" to "Shouted loudly".
• Avoid wimpy writing: Avoid "almost", "seems to".