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Why use plain language in your communication?

Plain language is a win-win strategy that underpins trust, transparency and reach ‒ a simple technique you can’t afford to ignore.

Reading time: 5 mins | By Lee Ellwood

Organisations need people to engage with what they’re saying and act on it. But those same people are usually busy and attention-poor, so communication needs to be quick to access, easy to understand and simple to use. How do you achieve that?

Through plain language: a simple way to engage the audiences you need and inspire them to act. It's an on-call technique that builds trust, creates transparency and extends your reach — 3 things every organisation working for public or social benefit needs to achieve its goals.

Using plain language in business communication is a strategic decision, not a passing fad.

Writing always has a job to do

A scenario: your organisation has worked hard for months to create, launch and deliver a new impact program that’s made big changes for many people. It’s vital for the program’s continuation that stakeholders and funders get on board, so your team writes a report and sends it out.

But it’s been written in corporate-speak: passive voice, third person, sector jargon, complex sentences, long paragraphs. It’s dense and obscure. The stakeholders can’t skim it quickly, so it goes to the bottom of their priority pile. The funders don’t have time to decode it, so they send back a ‘no’.

The report has failed to do its job. You’ve missed your chance to secure another year’s sign-off and funding. All that hard work may as well not have been done.

What does ‘plain language’ mean?

Plain language is writing that lets the intended reader find, understand and use information the first time they read it. It’s functional, not stylistic. It makes your documents and information more accessible to more people.

We're talking about understandable language that means you don’t get phone calls asking for information that’s already on your website. And potential clients don’t give up on you because they don’t have time to unpack your messaging and work out what exactly it is that you do.

It is not ‘dumbing down’: dumbed-down is about what you say, while plain language is about how you say it. The Australian Government Style Manual nails it: ‘Plain language is an essential communication tool that supports comprehension, accessibility, trust and efficiency’.

So much benefit, one simple strategy.

Plain language builds trust

Trust, a known business differentiator, is about relationship: what people feel about your organisation. You can build trust by ensuring people have repeated, reliably positive experiences with you.

Plain language makes interacting with you efficient, easy and consistent ‒ a positive experience. Funders, program participants, clients, members and partners who are consistently able to understand what you're telling them are more likely to believe you, trust you and feel prepared to support you. They're more likely to renew their membership, read your newsletters or recommit financial support.

So you’re more likely to achieve your organisational goals.

Plain language is transparent

Transparency is structural: it’s an institutional openness about how you operate that can be checked and verified. By removing opaqueness and jargon from your communication, plain language supports transparency.

As an example, the Victorian state government recently launched an accessible communications policy that mandates plain language and accessibility for its internal and external communications. It applies not only to employees but also to contractors, consultants, IT suppliers, volunteers and anyone else ‘undertaking activity for or on behalf of’ the state government.

By setting clear benchmarks that are organisation-wide, a policy like this embodies transparency. If the government doesn’t meet its own proclaimed standards for communicating to the public, it’s going to show.

Plain language is reach

As any sociolinguist will tell you, jargon and opaque language function, intentionally or otherwise, as gatekeeping mechanisms. If someone understands the group lingo, they’re in; if they don’t, they’re out. Plain language removes that exclusivity and provides access to your writing, enabling it to reach more people.

Accessibility isn’t only about readers with low literacy, English as an additional language or disability. Barriers to access can be temporary rather than permanent, as IPEd’s newly updated accessibility guide, Books without barriers, explains. Think of the parent who's functioning on no sleep or juggling a baby while trying to complete an online form: they just want to do the thing quickly. And everyone's attention is divided between so many responsibilities in any given minute — so why make things harder than they need to be?

Plain language is inclusivity by design. It helps everyone do what they need to do. It costs the fully attentive reader nothing, and it's a genuine relief to everyone else.

Legal writing can be plain language

If there's one field where jargon and formality have always felt unavoidable, it's law. Our legal editor, Kylie Howard, has written about why plain language matters in legal documents for businesses, and how it’s possible to convey legal information without losing precision or protection. Read Kylie’s article here if you've ever assumed your content is too technical or too high-stakes for plain language.

After all, if legal writers can adapt to plain language, everyone can!

Why would you not?

Plain language is gaining ground as a communication standard. Government partners, funders, members and customers are increasingly expecting it, and Victoria's mandate is a sign of where standards are heading.

Here are some signs your communication isn’t as plain as you thought.

  • Readers regularly ask your staff to explain something a document already says.
  • Your reports are skimmed or ignored, not acted on.
  • Your funding applications come back requesting clarifications.
  • Meetings get bogged down in ‘robust discussions’ of what the papers are actually saying.

These gaps are less a writing fail than a strategy fail, because they’re costing you opportunities and efficiency.

So why would you not use plain language? It's the simplest strategy available for effective, trust-building communication, and it's right within reach.

If the benefits of using plain language sound good to you, get in touch ‒ we can set you on the road to clearer documents, fewer misunderstandings and better reader responses.

A blond white woman is reading a printed annual report. Writing a good annual report will help to get attention for your impactful work.
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Writing a good annual report starts at the beginning

Annual report season doesn't have to be stressful. Thoughtful planning before you start will save you angst later – and produce a well-written annual report people actually read.

Reading time: 4 mins | By Lee Ellwood

With EOFY over, many government entities, NFPs and for-purpose organisations are now focusing on their annual reports. This is a once-a-year opportunity to show people what you’ve achieved – and to influence how they see you.

That’s why writing an annual report has a reputation for being stressful and panic-inducing. No one wants to mess up this key chance to be seen, understood, trusted and funded. And the bigger the organisation, the more complex the report project.

Whether you’re in charge of a corporate annual report or a non-profit one, it’s a key opportunity to make your impact visible. Here are some tips for sidestepping annual report problems from the outset.

Know what you need to achieve

Before you get into the writing or design, get clear on your purpose and audience. Funders and board members, ratepayers or constituents, strategic partners and the public all want different things from the same document. When you know who you're writing for, you can shape the report to reach them.

Also, confirm what needs to be included in an annual report for your organisation. Requirements vary depending on organisation type: charity, company, council or government entity. If you're not sure, check with your governance or compliance officer before you start writing.

Then separate your essential content from your narrative content, so you’re clear on what you have to work with. It’s the story-driven content that makes your report worth reading, while the compliance sections for an annual report – governance, financials and performance – back it up.

Look and learn

Before you start work, revisit last year's annual report. Reviewing what worked, what didn't, and what feedback came in can give you lots of ideas for improvement. Comments from your board, executive team, partners and the public will give you different perspectives to consider.

Also, check out what other organisations are doing well in their annual reports. (If you’re not sure where to find good annual report examples from leading companies, search for sector and industry association awards lists – they’re online and all over socials.)

  • Do plain language and clear headings make reading and comprehension quick and easy?
  • What central narratives or themes run through them?
  • Are the designs spacious and clean, or cluttered and dense?
  • What’s your first impression of each report? Why?

Work out a realistic timeline

Most annual report stress comes from underestimating everything that isn’t writing. For a low-stress annual report, we suggest:

  • working backwards from the launch or tabling date to determine your project start date
  • including time for design, photography, stakeholder sign-off and printing
  • adding another 4 weeks, to cover contingencies
  • chasing case studies, quotes and permissions earlier than you think you need to
  • confirming up front who approves what and in what order.

Communicate your schedule to all stakeholders clearly and firmly – book time in their diaries for their reviews or contributions, if you need to. Vague emails saying ‘I need this in 2 weeks’ are too easy for busy people to overlook.

Government and council reports need very detailed scheduling, because they have fixed tabling or presentation deadlines and strict requirements. If this is you, check out the Australian Government Style Manual’s Reports page for helpful links and advice.

Choose your format(s) early

Print, PDF, web or a combination? Your annual report’s format (or formats) will affect its word count, structure and design schedule. And retrofitting content to a different format instead of designing for it up front will raise both your stress levels and the cost of your annual report.

If you're a government or council writer, accessibility and web content standards will apply to your report. These requirements can influence format decisions, so they’re better factored in now than later.

Find your story before you write it

During this planning phase, identify a narrative theme for the report. This is the story that will run through the whole document, giving your reader a reason to keep going and to care about your work. The narrative is carried as much by case studies, quotes and images as by your statistics and graphs – often, more.

Whether you deliver infrastructure or social change, every organisation has a story, and that narrative is important for reader engagement. The trick is to identify it before you start writing, not halfway through.

Give your report its best chance

This isn’t about perfectionism. Getting your annual report ‘right’ is strategic. It gets this high-profile document read and understood, allowing it to achieve its purpose: showing the world the impact you’re making.

One last tip for reducing annual report stress: consider outsourcing at least some of the work to an external editor. When you have an expert to worry about the language level, cohesion and clear narrative, you’ll be free to manage the project (and those darn stakeholders).

In our next post, we’ll tackle the classic annual report challenge: how to manage multiple contributors and stakeholders while staying sane.

Image credit: Goodluz on Depositphoto, by licence

A businesswoman wearing a hijab is working in office. She looks very frustrated by the cost of bad business writing as she grimaces at documents.
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The cost of bad business writing

Poor communication may doing your organisation more damage than you realise. Can you afford the unseen cost of bad business writing?

Reading time: 3 minutes | By Lee Ellwood

Does it really matter if a workplace document doesn't do what it's meant to do? Yes ‒ and for more reasons than you might expect. Unclear writing that doesn’t engage readers costs time, money, trust and impact, often before anyone outside the organisation sees it.

Writing is how things get done in an organisation of any size. So when the writing doesn’t work, neither does the business behind it.

The internal cost to your organisation

Your organisation pays for ineffective business writing long before a client, stakeholder or funder sees it: in inefficiency. When guidelines and directions are unclear, staff waste time trying to decipher them. Tasks take longer than they need to, and completed work gets redone. Meetings run over while people untangle the paperwork.

Every misunderstanding costs time that wasn’t in the budget. Your productivity is down. And in inefficient, opaque work environments, staff morale drops quickly.

Sometimes the cost of bad business writing is more direct. Unclear information leads to real mistakes: incorrect orders, inaccurate client records or bad decisions based on an unclear brief. Errors cost money to fix.

... and the external cost

Possibly more damaging, those errors directly affect clients and stakeholders. That costs you in reputational damage and broken trust — invaluable assets you’ve built up over time. And the damage can take even longer to repair.

Your organisation also pays in missed opportunities. We all handle so much information every day, and poor writing makes it easy to choose what not to read. When your writing doesn’t do its job, your impact stalls.

  • When stakeholders don't read the reports you send them, your achievements aren’t recognised.
  • Policymakers miss your recommendations, so your impact is limited.
  • If the public doesn't connect with your campaigns, they don’t engage with your mission.
  • Funders can’t see your value or your capability when your application doesn’t clearly show them.

If you’re in a social impact, government, research or community organisation, this cost can hit you particularly hard. Your work often depends on convincing people who don't have to say ‘yes’: a funder choosing between your proposal and someone else's. A policymaker deciding which recommendations make it into a decision. A community member deciding whether to trust a service they don’t know.

Poor writing can leave your readers thinking that if you can’t explain yourself clearly, you might not have your act together either.

Bad business writing is an organisational risk

That’s why poor writing is more than a little quality problem. It’s actually an organisational risk: to your brand, your reputation, your hard-won trust and your potential to change people’s lives.

  • A report that goes unread is a missed opportunity to shape a decision.
  • A grant application that doesn't succeed is money not raised for work that matters.
  • A set of instructions that gets misread is an error that damages your reputation and trust.

Each of those examples traces back to a document that didn't do its job ‒ and each one has consequences beyond the page.

Writing as a strategic tool

Good writing does more than describe your work or move it along: it’s the doorway between what you do and the people who need to see it. Once you start seeing writing that way, you can use it to its full potential.

Many organisations act to fix clearly visible problems, like inefficient processes, an underperforming program or IT that’s slowing everyone down. Writing rarely gets the same attention, yet it carries your reporting, your public voice, your internal instructions, your funding bids, your case for support.

Can you really afford not to see good writing as a strategic asset ‒ and invest in it accordingly?

We use and recommend the Australian Government Style Manual as a guide to good writing principles of clarity, consistency, accessibility and inclusivity.

Good business writing can make your organisation a winner
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May the best writing win: how good business writing sets you apart

Q: Why are the Oscars like business writing? A: Being the best candidate is not why you win. (Spoiler: your writing is – or could be.)

Reading time: 5 mins | By Lee Ellwood

As I write this, dozens of pretty Hollywood people are nervously walking the 2026 red carpet and braving the flashbulbs, hoping for a win. Yet, as most of us know, the Best Anything awards do not always go to the best anyone. (Remember Gwyneth Paltrow winning for Shakespeare in Love over Cate Blanchett for Elizabeth?)

That’s what happens in business writing, too – especially reports, grant applications and thought leadership pieces. It’s not the best organisation that wins the attention, the sign-off, the funding or the eyeballs: it’s the organisation with the best writing.

That might sound harsh, but it’s true. Good business writing conveys the value and impact of the great work you’re doing. Poor, bad or average writing doesn’t.

Why is good business writing important?

Businesses don’t write reports, blogs, applications and web copy just to look good on the internet’s red carpet. They write to win – whether it’s funding, program approval, engagement, buy-in or sales they’re competing for. And in the social good space, knowing how to write a good grant application or what makes a good impact report is critical for your organisation’s success.

In recent years I've assessed applications for government funding and student scholarships, and I've experienced the difference between well-written applications and badly written ones. When you have 50 applications for 10 scholarships, or 300 applications for 30 funding places, it’s good writing that will make you stand out and really showcase your strengths.

You can’t assume that your reputation will get you through or that what you do is enough to earn a win. Whether it’s a grant application or an impact report, your readers can only judge you on the writing you put before them.

What is ‘good’ business writing?

Yes, yes, grammar and spelling and commas and all that. The technicalities are definitely important, but first, look at the bigger picture. You’re writing to communicate something, and you’re communicating to achieve a result.

At EllWords, we think about good business writing in terms of what it does, rather than what it is. Effective written business communication is:

  • clear: getting your message across, accurately and completely, without confusion
  • effective: prompting the reader response that you want (buy-in to your activities, consideration of you as an expert, conviction about your value, donations, subscriptions)
  • engaging: giving readers the sense that they know you, which builds trust and credibility
  • strategic: highlighting your ideas, achievements, efforts and successes, not any vagueness and verbosity.

That’s why it matters so much that you and your teams develop good business writing skills. Evaluators, funders, stakeholder committees and awards judges rarely see the full scope of the work your organisation does. They can only experience it through your writing. And in a crowded sector or applicant pool, your writing may be the only thing that differentiates you from your competitors.

Let’s return to my funding applications. Presented with 300 applications for 30 opportunities from 300 service providers, it dawned on me how good writing gave certain applicants an edge.

Most of those applicants were probably as deserving of the funding as any other. But unstructured responses, formal expressions, generalised statements and passive sentences made it much harder to identify the claims for suitability. Or the evidence for those claims.

So it wasn’t the applicants’ long experience or prominent reputation in the sector that showed whether they met the evaluation criteria. It was clarity, conciseness and simple directness of responses, which successfully told a convincing story of their expertise and strategies.

Our principles of good business writing

Good writing makes it easier for readers to say ‘yes’ to you, whether your request is for funds, subscriptions, sign-off or buy-in.

Here are our top tips for good business writing, to help you write an effective impact report or a winning grant application.

1. Prepare

  • Know why you’re writing and who you’re writing to. A media release for journalists calls for a different writing approach to a persuasive article calling for public attention.
  • Have a strategy. Write for the reader, not for yourself. That means you need to know why they should care about your topic and be able to step across into their world as you write.
  • Decide your narrative. Work out how your data can be used to tell a story: of need, success, changed lives. The old ‘problem, solution, outcome’ structure is the simplest storytelling format there is – and it works.

2. Craft

  • Outline a … well, an outline. Sketch out your beginning, middle and end before you dive into the prose – bullet points are great for this planning stage. In most business writing forms, an introduction and a conclusion either side of your narrative work well. Then start expanding your outline into the full story of your report, research findings or application, bringing in evidence when appropriate.
  • Write clearly and concisely. Everyone is busy and time-poor, so make it easy for them to dive in and grab your meaning. Use active voice, drop the industry jargon, and get right to the point. Mixing shorter and longer sentences can help keep readers engaged.
  • Apply plain language. It’s not that readers are dumb or lazy; why make it hard for them to see your personality and get your point? See ‘busy and time-poor’, above. Evaluation teams are particularly so.
  • Be accurate. Getting your facts right supports your organisation’s credibility and builds people’s trust. When there’s so much competition to be heard, not verifying your statistics and claims can send you straight to the bottom of the pile.

3. Refine

  • Cut it back. Once you have a first draft, go back over it. Tighten the language, check whether each paragraph or section flows on to the next one, and take out any waffle or vague expressions.
  • Avoid industry jargon, ‘corporate speak’ or internal language. You want readers to feel included, not excluded. Using language and terms they don’t know will send them elsewhere to read.
  • Don’t assume knowledge. In many contexts, it’s far better to assume your reader doesn’t have background knowledge of the issue or topic. Gaps in the logic are easy doors through which readers can leave.
  • Get someone else to review it. When you’ve worked hard on a lengthy piece of writing, it becomes hard to spot errors and omitted words. Ask a colleague to look your draft over closely for you to see what they pick up. Writing apps can be helpful, but they do make mistakes (such as US spelling and punctuation conventions), so don't accept all their suggestions without verifying.
  • Top tip: call on your friendly professional editor. We’re often engaged to do a last check over documents such as impact reports, research articles and grant applications. We have a trained, objective eye to bring to your writing, and you might be surprised by the improvements we make.

May the best writing win – for you

Just like the Academy members, trying to decide 24 awards over some 150+ nominees, your business writing’s readers want to find the best organisations. The one to give their money to. The one making the most impact on the world. The one they can stand beside, ethically and values-wise.

You may have the most committed team, the most effective programs or the strongest client evidence – in short, you may well be the best organisation for the opportunity. But your readers don’t see your team, experience your programs or talk to your clients: they only meet your words. And often, they do so under time pressure, with many other candidates yelling in their ears.

When it’s red carpet time for your organisation, remember the power your writing can have. Make it easy for people to say ‘yes’ to you.

And if time is short or workloads are high, call EllWords. We can help your name be the one called out when the envelope’s opened.

Contact us today