Building Rapport

What is the value of plain language? Part 2

Don’t expect me to wax philosophic. I am not taking this up as a deep subject. This is practical. We plain language professionals want to be reasonable but we don’t want to be exploited for our naiveté. But some clients are clueless about how much effort goes into plain language. They undervalue our results.

Years ago, a friend did a revision and reduction of a 14-page standard form. She billed $10,000 for 3 month’s work. In the year that followed, the company saved $100,000 in printing costs due to the new form. But when asked to fund the second stage of the project, the company declined. I’d say the value of plain language was 10 times its cost. And they passed.

Let me give you a personal example. Another friend, a lawyer, was asked to comment on a draft plain-language description of procedures in his agency. Members of the public, who would be in distress, were the intended readers. He asked me to do a better rewrite. He would pay me himself and take credit.

I worked on it at an hourly rate and billed him fairly for $1000.

It turned out the agency has a plain language explanation of its new legislation on its website. But the draft procedures used different terminology for the same things. I knew enough from my previous experience to look for that.

The agency was pleased with “his” effort and gave him an honorarium of $250.00. which in no way represented the effort at HIS hourly rate.

I don’t know what we can do to make clients appreciate our value.

I try to inform individual clients what I do for them. I have always included in a proposal an outline of the steps I will need to take. When working on a project, I always provide a work plan and schedule to the client at the start.

What do you suggest?

My work this week  took me on a digression. I  collected some links for online resources dealing with communication in the health field. Please suggest more and I will add them to the list.

Understanding Medspeak http://www.milhealthsdirectory.org/mhd-directory/understanding-medspeak.html

Clear Language Group http://www.clearlanguagegroup.com/

Health Literacy, Helen Osborne, http://www.healthliteracy.com/

Improving Communication-Improving Cara, AMA See Part 5C Health Literacy http://www.ama-assn.org/ama1/pub/upload/mm/369/ef_imp_comm.pdf

Lisa Gualtieri’s blog on health  http://lisaneal.wordpress.com/

Drug labels redesigned http://www.plainlanguage.gov/examples/before_after/overctrdrug.pdf

I am not going to write here about the benefits of using plain language, which include costs savings and other bottom-line advantages. My complaint here is about those clients who do not understand how much time and effort we expend to transform their drab, wordy documents into plain language. First, I have to discuss what is actually involved.

South African Dr Sarah Slabbert, of the Plain Language Institute, has said:

“Editing or translation: First of all, the ‘linguistically complex document’, i.e. the document that needs to be converted into plain language, is rewritten or translated into plain language. During this phase, the document is analysed and the linguistic structure of the document is simplified, while taking care that the meaning is not distorted. Formal words are substituted with less formal words; for example, ‘accomplish’ will be replaced with ‘do’”

Quoted at http://www.enterpriserisk.co.za/forum/topics/what-is-plain-language-and-why

This may be what most general editors think should happen first. Plain Language is more than an editing job following the guidelines seen here and there. Maybe she incorporates this (below) when she says the document is analyzed.

Here: PlainLanguage.gov http://www.plainlanguage.gov/howto/guidelines/bigdoc/fullbigdoc.pdf

There:
• using short sentences and clear language
• using words consistently
• using the active voice
• avoiding strings of synonyms
• avoiding unnecessarily formal language
• replacing “legalese” and jargon with familiar terms and phrases

The PlainLanguage.Gov site does remind its users that plain language involves organization and design as well as language. But something is still missing from the early stage. Guidelines are fine as they are, but mine are more like these Writing Guidelines: http://plainlanguage.com/newintro.html#guide

What is in the magic?

I do have a recurring client who gets it. They send me a document and ask me to do my “magic.” Other people can do the magic. Writer or editor, you must know the readers well. Some understand their readers’ needs because they work with the same demographic repeatedly. The rest of us have to do the research to get to know the reader.

My own client does know their readers well. This client often hires academic experts to tell them what they need to teach their readers. The academics usually produce a thorough report using academic language, both jargon and necessary technical language.

So I get the document and do the magic so the information is understandable and usable by a group of readers, like one of these:

1. Women whose families are new immigrants to Canada from war-torn countries, whose first language is not English,
2. Aboriginal women, on reserve or in urban environments
3. Parents, with limited education, living in rural or isolated Northern areas of Canada

After doing the necessary reader research, the plain language editor must try to see the information through the eyes of the ultimate reader.

These days we try to ignore differences between ourselves and others, so we do not discriminate from prejudice. Plain language editors must acknowledge differences between people to benefit from seeing the world from the other person’s perspective.

Good clients understand the making information understandable requires more than editing. Being able to see the world differently, that is the magic.

Now, I will be talking dollar values in the next part of this article.