words count not word counts

When I first got into plain language, I thought the fewer words you use the better. But over the years I’ve learned this is not always true.

When you first look into plain language, one of the first pieces of advice you’ll see is to replace common bureaucratic phrases and constructions with simpler options. Advice like replacing:

• “utilize” with “use”
• “in order to” with “to”
• words that end in “ation” with their true verb forms
• passive constructions (will be stored) with active (they will store).

These are the low-hanging fruit of plain language, and they will often reduce word counts or at least reduce the space the copy takes up.

However, when you start digging into the meat of the content, sometimes making it clearer actually adds words. One obvious case is noun strings. A noun string is a group of three or more nouns (and sometimes adjectives). Examples of noun strings I’ve recently encountered include:

• Outside vented sump
• Fire extinguishing system maintenance
• Flammable liquids storage cabinets
• Solid-fuel burning appliance chimneys

The problem with noun strings is that they need unpacking before you can understand what they’re saying. They’re ambiguous about which words modify which words. Noun strings place an undue cognitive burden on the reader, because they have to unpack them as they read. For example, with “outside vented sump,” I can’t figure out from the text alone whether the sump itself is outside (and vented) or if it’s vented to the outside.

Unpacking noun strings usually involves adding words to help the reader understand their sequence. The examples above are clearer if they’re rewritten, perhaps as follows:

• Outside vented sump –> sump vented to the outside
• Fire extinguishing system maintenance –> maintaining systems that extinguish fires
• Flammable liquids storage cabinets –> cabinets that store flammable liquids
• Solid-fuel burning appliance chimneys –> chimneys for appliances that burn solid fuels

Another way to deal with noun strings is to reduce the detail. So after a first reference to “cabinets that store flammable liquids” you can simply refer to them as “cabinets” or “the cabinet.”

Once you start noticing noun strings, you will see that many organizations use them to name committees and branches and systems and forms, and then they use acronyms to reduce the word count or space. But acronyms also place a cognitive burden on the reader to remember them, especially when reading long documents with many acronyms.

Wherever possible, avoid acronyms. Instead, simply use the full name wherever you have to clarify any potential confusion and then use a generic term like “the committee.”

These are just a couple of ways that improving clarity can sometimes mean more words.