I'm a recovering Liberal-Arts-style essay writer

During an interview for an intern position, my interviewer asked me what I struggled with coming into technical writing. I mentioned that it was hard to stop writing in such a verbose way, especially coming from a Liberal Arts background. My interviewer agreed and said that she still struggles with it sometimes. I think it's a common struggle and it shows that technical writing is a skill that you must learn and hone.

Why so verbose?

When I handed in my final essay in Grade 12 English, my English teacher had a competition for the longest essay. And mine won. I wrote an essay about how the actions of the main characters in two novels could be explained by Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs—how could it have been less than 19 pages?

Writing essays just brings out the complex sentence structures and the long, complex words. You learn the academic style of writing partly by being encouraged to write long papers, but also by emulating the style of other papers you read in your academic journey.

I always loved writing essays. I loved choosing the most precise words and crafting the perfect sentence that says exactly what I want to say.

And that's still true; it just looks different for technical writing. The academic style of writing isn't appropriate for other kinds of writing. Writing in plain language is just another style that you can learn and practice, just like you can learn and practice a certain essay writing style.

Some simple tips for plain writing

If you want to improve the clarity or conciseness of your writing, or you're new to technical writing, start with these best practices for plain writing. Though they are simple, they take practice! You may not realise how often you do something like write in the passive voice until you start looking for it.

Use the active voice

In the active voice, the subject performs the action, like in the following example:

I wrote this article.

When you change this sentence to the passive voice, the original subject comes after the verb, so it receives the action. Here's the same sentence in the passive voice:

This article was written by me.

Using the active voice makes your writing clearer and easier to read. It places focus on who or what is actually doing the action. It also makes your sentences shorter since the passive requires adding a form of "to be" to the verb and "by" to the subject.

Sometimes you need to use the passive voice and that's okay—just favour the active voice the rest of the time.

Use the present tense

Avoiding the future tense and removing unnecessary modal verbs (like "should") makes your writing simpler and removes ambiguity.

Your reader is using your writing to do something in the present, so your choice of tense should reflect that. Changing from the future to the present tense makes your writing more concise and more effective.

Using "should" removes trust in your writing and introduces ambiguity. For example, if you write "selecting this option should open the dialog box"—is there a chance that it won't? Can the reader actually use your writing to do what they want to do? Removing unnecessary modal verbs makes your writing more direct and more clear.

Use short words and short sentences

Using simple, short words makes your writing easier and quicker to read. Similarly, using short sentences makes your writing easier to read and digest.

It's not about bringing your writing down a level, but about making it as simple and direct as you can. If you can use a shorter or more common word, then do it. If you can split up a long or complex sentence into two sentences that are easier to read, then do it.

Avoid nominalisations

A nominalisation is a verb or adjective that has been changed into a noun. For example, changing the verb "decide" to "decision," or changing the adjective "effective" to "effectiveness." Here's a sentence that uses these nominalisations:

We made a decision to update the software to allow us to increase the effectiveness of the process.

That's rough. Here's a revision of that sentence that uses the verb and adjective forms instead:

We decided to update the software to make the process more effective.

You could refine it further by writing "We updated..." Replacing the nominalisations makes the sentence shorter, clearer, and easier to read. Using action verbs also makes your writing more active.

Use tables and lists

Using tables and lists is a great way to transform a block of text into something that is easier to scan. It's also easier to read and find information in lists and tables instead of in the multiple paragraphs that they replace.

Plainlanguage.gov has some great before and after examples of using tables here: https://www.plainlanguage.gov/guidelines/design/use-tables-to-make-complex-material-easier-to-understand/ .

I think using tables was the biggest revelation I had when I first started learning about technical writing.

Now what?

This is just a starting point for making your writing more concise and easier to read. You could always enroll in a technical writing course to learn more. 😉

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Thanks for reading!

I'm a new technical writer and I want to be part of the community. I'd love to hear your feedback and if you want to connect, you can find me on LinkedIn!