Why 44% of Your Audience Might Not Understand You: An interview with Jamila Savoy
We often get questions about plain language and its connection to accessibility. To help answer them, we've invited our friend and plain language expert Jamila Savoy for a conversation about why clear writing matters and how it builds trust with your audience.
1. Tell us a bit about Plain Language Matters. What services do you offer, and who do you work with?
Plain Language Matters is a boutique consultancy founded by me and my business partner Jess Mathew. Collectively, we have more than 20 years of experience in communications, specialising in multicultural communications and accessible communications.
We work with any business, organisation, or government department that needs to communicate a message to external audiences.
2. You have built a brand that is deliberately modern and fun, which is quite different from the traditional plain language space. What prompted you to take this approach?
Our business is an extension of Jess and me. We wanted our branding to reflect who we are as people. We love colour and we’re all about making an impact.
We also want to show people that clear communication is something relevant to everyone. If our bright and bold branding attracts people to learn more about plain language, we’ve done our job.
3. So, what is plain language, and what isn't it?
Plain language is an internationally recognised way of writing with specific rules and principles.
At its core, it’s about putting your reader first. It’s about knowing what they want to hear about and delivering the information in a clear, concise and easy-to-understand way.
It is not, as some people say, ‘dumbing things down’.
Writing in plain language means you are respecting your readers' time and energy, something that should be important to all of us.
The four principles of plain language are:
Knowing and understanding your audience
Writing clearly
Organising the content
Evaluating
4. Why does plain language matter? What's the impact when organisations don't prioritise it?
Let me put it to you like this. How many times have you started reading a sentence and by the time you get to the end of it, you need to go back to the beginning because you’ve forgotten what it said at the start? Or read through an email and thought to yourself, “What does this person want me to do?” Or come across an acronym at the end of an article, but forgot what it meant, so had to scroll to the top again?
Plain language matters because when you write in plain language you make sure your reader understands what you’re saying the first time around. There is no re-reading, no scrolling back to the top and no confusion once they’ve finished reading your information.
When an organisation, business, or government continues to put out complex, jargon-filled information, they risk their clients or customers losing trust in their brand. If people don’t understand what you’re saying, they don’t trust you.
According to the Edelman Trust Barometer, people now trust businesses more than they trust the government. And research shows that people are ‘more likely to trust a company that uses jargon-free language in its communications.’
Finally, in Australia, about 44% of Australians read at a low reading level. Potentially, you are missing out on 44% of the population by not writing in plain language.
5. What's the most common plain language problem you see organisations struggling with?
The most common plain language problem I see organisations struggle with is focusing on themselves rather than their readers. They’re too worried about what they want to tell their reader instead of what the reader wants or needs to hear about.
When an organisation starts from this space, communication is likely to miss the mark.
The first principle of plain language is knowing and understanding your reader. You need to know what they want and need to know and how they want the information delivered.
If you don’t know this information, you risk providing unhelpful, unnecessary information to people. When you do that too often, people will stop reading or listening to what you have to say. This can become a serious problem in times of crisis.
6. When you are working with a client, what does the process typically look like? How do you help them transform their content?
When we work with clients, we expect them to know and understand their readers. However, if they don’t, we will help them with research and uncovering who their readers are and what they need to know.
What we tend to focus on with clients is the two middle principles of plain language, writing clearly and organising the content. This could be training teams on these principles or editing any content to be written in plain language.
We’re also passionate about embedding a culture of plain language in organisations. We help in whatever way we can to influence senior leadership or write policies so that organisations can keep plain language at the forefront.
7. Is there a particular sector or industry where plain language is especially critical right now?
Writing in plain language is helpful across all sectors and industries. It really is an essential part of accessibility. But we believe it’s critical for governments, especially government services like aged care, health and disability.
In the 2021 ABS Census, 5.6 million people or 22% reported using a language other than English at home. Some organisations are doing amazing work translating important information but starting with an English version written in plain language will also support many people wanting to use your services.
8. With AI writing tools becoming more common, how do you see the relationship between AI and plain language? Are these tools helping or hindering plain language principles?
I’m a big advocate of using AI tools. But I see them as just that, another tool for your toolbox. AI tools can help with some of the clear writing and organising elements of plain language, but they don’t help you with the human side of plain language which is the knowing your audience part and the empathy part.
I can’t believe we got all the way through this interview without mentioning empathy!
For us, the empathy element of plain language is the most important part. This is the part before you sit down to write anything. You consider how your reader feels right now, what they need and want to know, and how they want that information delivered.
Maybe people will argue and say AI can help you with that, but I disagree. That human part of plain language will always be necessary.
The final part of writing in plain language is evaluating your work. This ensures it meets your reader's needs. This is also a fundamental part that humans need to do, not AI.
9. For someone reading this who wants to improve their writing, what is one small change they could make today that would have the biggest impact?
Shorten your sentences. Please, please, shorten your sentences.
Sentence length is one of the top two factors that will determine if your information is easy to read or hard to read.
You should only have one idea per sentence. Sometimes that’s hard for people to understand and they prefer working with a number. The Australian Government Style Manual says to ‘Keep sentences to an average of 15 words and no more than 25 words.’
If you’re not sure whether your sentence is too long, look for commas and the words ‘and’, ‘but’, ‘or’. Most likely, you can change your comma to a full stop and make two sentences.
10. What resources would you recommend for people wanting to learn more about plain language?
The Australian Government Style Manual is a fantastic free resource that covers a lot about communicating, including plain language.
The style manual has been around for more than 60 years. It has a team that continues to conduct user research for continuous improvement. Don’t worry that it says it’s for government communications; it’s relevant for anyone communicating.
11. Where can people find you and learn more about Plain Language Matters?
Check us out at plainlanguagematters.org or follow us on LinkedIn. We love a chat and a coffee, so connect with our personal LinkedIn pages too: Jess Mathew and Jamila Savoy. We’d love to chat about how we might be able to help your organisation.
About Jamila Savoy
Jamila Savoy, Co-Founder, Plain Language Matters
For nearly 20 years, Jamila has helped organisations communicate clearly and accessibly, whether it's rewriting dense policy, shaping public health messages or coaching teams to write with confidence and purpose.
At work and at home (with her young kids), she breaks down complex ideas into language that's easy to understand, without talking down to people.
She's a grammar nerd who drinks too much coffee, refuses to use unnecessary capital letters and firmly believes that PowerPoint should be a last resort.
She lives for good conversations, plain language and the joy of seeing someone finally get it.
