I've been a fan of the "plain English" methodology for a long time and tried to use it in my technical writing. It makes intuitive sense to me that simpler writing is easier to understand, especially for non-technical readers.
An article in the Harvard Business Review summarizes some of the academic research into the benefits of clear writing, and shows that it can have a financial impact.
The cost of bad writing stems from the way the brain works. Science shows that if you don’t give the mind a stimulus that’s appealing — a piece of good writing in this case — it fails to respond with pleasing neurochemicals that motivate people to read further. If you do, you trigger a release of dopamine and other chemicals that hook readers — and keep them reading.
To be sure, scientists don’t know all the secrets of better motivating readers. Most research on fluency relies on correlation. Correlation between readability and financial gain can suggest a cause-effect relationship but doesn’t confirm it. The current crop of studies had an advantage in this respect. Three of them studied the year-over-year upgrading of disclosures as the SEC rule went into effect in 1998. This onetime event tended isolate readability as a factor, and the data for this period did suggest fluency causes financial gain.
I struggled many times to convey the benefits of clear communication to upper managers. I wish I'd had this article to wave under their noses.
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