1191. This week, we talk to Iva Cheung, a plain language expert and editor who has helped shape Canada's plain language standards. We look at what plain language actually means (it's more than just short words and simple sentences) and why it matters for healthcare, legal rights, and everyday communication. Then we explore cognitive load theory, the expertise reversal effect, and why user testing is the secret ingredient most writers skip.
1191. This week, we talk to Iva Cheung, a plain language expert and editor who has helped shape Canada's plain language standards. We look at what plain language actually means (it's more than just short words and simple sentences) and why it matters for healthcare, legal rights, and everyday communication. Then we explore cognitive load theory, the expertise reversal effect, and why user testing is the secret ingredient most writers skip.
Find more from Iva at IvaCheung.com.
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[Computer-generated transcript]
Mignon Fogarty: Grammar Girl here. I'm Mignon Fogarty, and today I'm talking with the wonderful Iva Cheung about writing with plain language. Iva essentially has a PhD in this topic and has been on committees that determine the plain language standards in Canada, and teaches plain language writing at two different universities. Plus, she's won multiple Canadian editing awards, so we are in good hands today. Iva, welcome to the Grammar Girl Podcast.
Iva Cheung: Thank you so much. This is a huge honor. I've been a, been a big fan for a long time
Mignon Fogarty: Oh, I am just so grateful to have you here. I've been a fan of your work too for a long time, so mutual admiration. You know, I can't believe that I've never done a show on plain language writing. It's such an important skill to have, and I'm thrilled to have you talk about it. But I th- I think there are a lot of misconceptions. So let's start by making sure, you know, everyone understands what we're talking about
Iva Cheung: Yeah, absolutely. And you're right, there are a lot of misconceptions. And when I tell people that I do plain language work, sometimes they think that it's all about writing short sentences with short words or writing to a certain grade level, right? If it's at a grade six level or a grade eight level, then it's automatically in plain language.
Unfortunately, things are not quite so simple. Uh, plain language does actually have an official definition that was adopted in 2014 by the International Plain Language Federation. And you'll find variants of it floating around online, but they more or less say the same thing. And basically what plain language … what the definition says is that a communication is in plain language if its wording, structure, and design are so clear that its intended audience can easily find what they need, understand what they find, and use that information to meet their needs.
Mignon Fogarty: Yeah.
Iva Cheung: I know there's a lot to unpack there, so I'm happy to go step by step.
Mignon Fogarty: I think let’s talk about, um, you know, structure and design, I think are things people might not immediately think of.
Iva Cheung: Yeah, and I do think that's a branding issue on our part. The term is plain language, so people might assume that it's all about language. But, we are trying to convey that it's about more than that. We're considering documents and communications more holistically and looking at not just the wording, but also how it's presented to people and whether it's easy to navigate.
Mignon Fogarty: So what makes a document easy to navigate?
Iva Cheung: I think, I mean, if you consider, uh, how you would use, let's say, um, a manual for a soft serve ice cream machine that you've just bought for your home, right? If you're looking to troubleshoot something, you're not necessarily reading linearly from beginning to end, right? You might want to look for a topic either in the table of contents or maybe you can flip to the back and see if there's an index.
And then you would navigate to the page that has the content that you're looking for. So I think that is a distinction between what we would normally work on as plain language documents and, um, other kinds of written work. And it's mostly that this is information and these are communications that people need to use so that they can make decisions about their lives so that they can maybe learn how to do something, right?
And we're not talking about, you know, curling up on the couch with a good novel. Uh, these are communications that people use and so, they're not reading linearly from beginning to end. Uh, sometimes they might dive in and look for exactly what they want, get what they need, and then get out, right? So we have to have that organization in mind.
Mignon Fogarty: Yeah, that's when those subheadings are so important. You know what? It's funny you mentioned indexes because when I was teaching, I was shocked how many students never thought to look in the index. Like, the index is important, people. It's there for you. Use it. It's a great tool. Another thing that you mentioned in the definition was intended audience, and I
Iva Cheung: Yes. Yeah, thank you for pointing that out. I would say that that is the most important part of the definition of plain language. So something can be plain to one audience and not plain to another. And the only way you can tell if something is plain is if you ask your intended audience, which means that user testing is a core part of the plain language process.
Mignon Fogarty: Yeah, this is something I never thought of and it's, and as an editor it seems a little scary.
Iva Cheung: Yeah, I know that, uh, a lot of editors tend to work alone, right? And they're language experts. They approach a document and would like to think that at the end of the process they've produced something better or something that the reader can understand. I think when we're getting training as editors, we're often told that we are a proxy for the reader. And so if we're serving as a proxy for the reader, then why do you need to user test, right?
But I think there's an important concept known as, uh, the curse of knowledge that affects all of us, and that is that when you know enough about a certain topic, then you know a little too much to tell whether it's clear to somebody who's new to the topic, right? And you might be very empathetic as an editor, but you might not actually be representing the intended audience. So especially if, uh, a communicator is writing for a group that they're not a part of, then they really need to consult with that group to see if that group, uh, has the context they need to understand what they're trying to communicate.
Mignon Fogarty: Yeah, I've definitely experienced that curse of knowledge. I think it was a lot easier for me in some ways to write about language 20 years ago when I started Grammar Girl than it is today when I know all these linguistic terms and concepts. So, if you're doing user testing, how many people do you have to talk to? Do you have to go into one of those focus group rooms with the mirrors and you know, you have to talk to 30 people? Like how, what's it like?
Iva Cheung: Yeah, that is a common misconception unfortunately. User testing doesn't have to be that complicated. In fact, the Norman Nielsen Group has shown that, uh, for most applications, um, if you test with five people, that will uncover about 85% of your problems. And so you don't need a huge sample size. We're not trying to aim for statistical significance here, right? We're just trying to identify the main issues that the intended audience will have with your document. And it could be that they might not have the context they need to understand what you're trying to tell them.
They might be looking for certain information in a certain order that, you know, they're not finding. Um, and, uh, so consulting the audience is really important to see what background they have, what they already know, and what they need to know, and how they would like to get to know that information.
Mignon Fogarty: Does the location of where you do your testing matter?
Iva Cheung: Uh, it really depends on the kind of document that you're testing, I suppose. If you're testing an online document, then you can pretty much do user testing anywhere. But for print documents I would say that the best thing you can do is to test a document in the context that people will use it in.
Iva Cheung: So for example, if you're in line at the airport and you've got signage telling people what they need to do, to do to go through the security line, uh, then you have to bear in mind that people will be, uh, you know, stressed out. They might be trying to make a flight and hurry to their flight. You might also have to take into account that a lot, lot of people at the airport probably don't speak English as a, as, uh, a native or first language. And so all of these factors play into how receptive people are to new information. And so testing in context is really important because it gets to all of these other factors that can affect how people take in information and learn.
Mignon Fogarty: Yeah. Oh, that makes so much sense. I'm gonna... Yeah, in an airport I'm gonna read much more differently than I read in a library. You know, I would love to give people an example of a plain language editing project or how the changes can make a difference. Can you talk about some work that you did, maybe your PhD work or a project you did, you know, as a working editor?
Iva Cheung: Let me just back up and talk about how I like to think about plain language and actually most of my advocacy work. Uh, I tend to use cognitive load theory to understand plain language. And basically what cognitive load theory says is that what you know is stored in your long-term memory in these kind of abstract units we call schemas. And the thing about schemas is that the more practice or more exposure you have to something, the more complex those schemas can get. So for example, if somebody is just learning how to read in English, they might be having to recognize individual letters on a page before putting them together into words and making sense of those words.
Whereas if you're a more experienced reader, you might see a word and immediately recognize it. And so a beginner reader, their schemas would be at the letter level, whereas an experienced reader, their schemas might be at the word level or even groups of words. A lot of experienced readers, if they don't have specific training for proofreading, will miss typos because they will instantly recognize a word, uh, and maybe not notice that it's missing a letter or maybe a couple of letters are switched around. But, they recognize the word and already grab the concept from their long-term memory and, uh, make sense of it. And so they don't notice the details, right?
Mignon Fogarty: That makes so much sense. So we can only hold so much information in our brain at a time.
Iva Cheung: Yeah, that's right. And so what cognitive load theory says is that if we're trying to learn somethin we are taking in information through our senses, um, and we're also taking some schemas that we have in our long-term memory and processing all of that together in our working memory. And the key to understanding cognitive load theory is that working memory has a limited capacity.
So, some people might be familiar with Miller's law, which came from psychologist George Miller in the 1950s. And he posited that we can store about seven plus or minus two items in our short-term or working memory at a time. But it turns out that more recent research has shown that to be far too optimistic. We can only store about four plus or minus one items in our working memory at a time, so three to five things in our working memory. And by things or items, I sort of mean the schemas, right? The problem is that if our working memory is overwhelmed we don't learn properly. Uh, so, um, you can think of the working memory as kind of like a container of finite size, and if we try to cram too much into it, it doesn't process properly, and we don't create new schemas, and we don't learn that new information.
Mignon Fogarty: Maybe this is a simplification, but is this why in plain language writing shorter sentences are generally better?
Iva Cheung: Yeah. So what we wanna do with shorter sentences is essentially we want to give people just enough information that they can process it in their working memory and then make that new schema, store it in their long-term memory, and then clear their working memory for new information.
Mignon Fogarty: Whoosh.
Iva Cheung: Exactly.
Mignon Fogarty: Okay, so let's get to the examples
Iva Cheung: Okay. So my PhD project involved, um, helping people who are involuntarily hospitalized under my province's Mental Health Act. So you might consider this a civil commitment. That's another term to consider involuntary hospitalization. My project was to help people who are involuntarily hospitalized better understand their rights.
So when they're hospitalized against their will, they do lose a bunch of their rights. They lose their right to freedom, to, you know, leave the hospital without permission. They lose the right in my province to make decisions about their psychiatric care. But they still do have a lot of rights.
They don't lose any other rights. They have the right to appeal their hospitalization by applying to a review panel hearing. They can also apply for a second medical opinion from a different doctor to assess their treatment plan.
So they have rights. The problem was that a lot of people who are hospitalized, they don't understand what their rights are because those rights are never explained to them in a way they can understand in their situation, right? So you can imagine when somebody is involuntarily hospitalized, there's a lot going on. It's a very kind of overwhelming time. There is medical language, because they're in a hospital. There is legal language because this is a rights-based process. And people might not be very receptive to information when they're in acute psychiatric crisis, right? So all of these factors play into how well people can understand information.
The problem was that the way that the way the care teams were giving people this information before I started my project was a very bureaucratic, scary form that had some legal language. It had the term “habeas corpus” on it. And it had never been user-tested. So it had never been shown to people with lived experience of, uh, mental health conditions to give feedback on what it should say and what it should look like to best communicate this rights information.
So my project involved co-creating with people with lived experience a completely new set of communication tools. We, you know, found that people, a lot of people didn't wanna read in that state. They might prefer something like a video, right? So we created a pamphlet, a video, and posters that people could read, so an entire suite of communication tools.
And then we put those tools to a set of users to test, again, people with lived experience, to give us feedback. And we did three rounds of testing. Again, just five people can typically give you a lot of information. So we did three rounds of five. We spoke to 15 people to get good feedback and then created this new tool that is now being used in the province
Mignon Fogarty: That sounds amazing. So what, like between the first and second round and the second and third round, what was some of the feedback you got and what were some of the changes you made?
Iva Cheung: Yeah, I think a lot of it had to do with, um, the language we were using and, um, how clear we were being, uh, with specific terminology.
For example, we used a graphic to show people how long they could be detained under the legislation. That timeline that we used to show this we initially used an actual line, and it sort of extended out. There was an arrow that implied that it could extend out indefinitely, essentially. And a lot of the feedback we heard was that that's kinda scary, right?
Mignon Fogarty: Yeah
Iva Cheung: The idea that you could be detained indefinitely or detained for life. And so they gave us some suggestions on how we might be able to communicate the same information but, you know, not be quite as scary and intimidating.
Iva Cheung: One of the things that we heard was we'd initially created one poster with, you know, a lot of information. A lot of information about their rights, where they could get more information, and we were very detailed about it. And what we heard, the group of testers sort of gave us two sets of, uh, two types of feedback essentially.
One group said that, "Yes, when I'm on the psychiatric unit I want as much information as I can get, and typically I'm very bored. I don't have anything else to do, and so I will read everything that is on the wall." Right? So having that detailed poster made a lot of sense. The other group told us, "I couldn't read when I was in that state. I couldn't read. I couldn't, I couldn't absorb information. But knowing that I still have rights in that situation would've been comforting." And so we ended up changing our one poster to two posters. So we had one with a lot of information and another one that was very basic, but still told them that they have rights, and if they want more information, this is where they can go to find it.
Mignon Fogarty: That's amazing. Like clear communication, you know, it's really making a difference to people in a difficult situation. That's great. You know, you mentioned the medical and legal language and, you know, a lot of plain language advice recommends against using jargon. But when you talk about intended audiences, like are there audiences for which you actually do wanna use jargon?
Iva Cheung: Oh, absolutely. So if your intended audience is a group of people who are very familiar with that jargon and in fact use that jargon as shorthand. Then it absolutely makes sense to be using that jargon, especially if it's discipline specific and they all know what it means, right? So in fact, there's something called the expertise reversal effect, which is where if you use language that is much simpler than people are used to, it actually slows them down, possibly because they notice that you're using simpler language and they're-- they might be sort of preparing themselves for new information and then get confused as to why you're using that language when they already know what you're trying to tell them or they have a different way of, uh, understanding or articulating those concepts.
If you're writing to a specific, very specialized audience, it absolutely makes sense to be using the language they're familiar with.
Mignon Fogarty: What are some other, you know, really specific, like, language tips you can give to the audience if they wanna get, think more about writing with plain language?
Iva Cheung: If we go back to cognitive load theory, basically what we want to do with plain language is we want to cut out everything that adds cognitive load without adding meaning, right? For example, one common plain language tip is to use strong verbs instead of nominalizations. So nominalizations are nouns that come from other parts of speech or other word classes. Often they come from verbs. This could be something like inspiration instead of inspire. So they're words that tend to end in T-I-O-N or M-E-N-T that come from verbs. So management instead of manage.
And what happens when you use those nominalizations is that first of all, you have to add a bunch of supporting words to make the sentence make sense. So for example, you might say, “they were responsible for the management of this new program,” instead of saying “they managed the new program,” right?
And when you're using the nominalization, you're essentially forcing the reader or the listener to mentally translate that nominalization into a verb so that they can make sense of who is doing what. And by doing that, you are adding cognitive load unnecessarily, and you can see that there's no loss in meaning if we change from the management of to manage.
But we are saving a lot of cognitive load by doing that. I think one of the easiest ways that people can immediately brighten up their writing is to look for nominalizations, and if they notice a nominalization, then just ask themselves, would this be better if I changed it to, to a verb instead, right?
We also do this with adjectives. We might say something like, "This is reflective of," instead of, "This reflects," or "This is inclusive of," instead of, "This includes." So I would advise, you know, anytime you notice something like that in your writing, just see if the verb would make more sense or make the sentence easier to read.
Sometimes it doesn't. There's a reason these exist. I never want to be absolute when I talk about plain language. But in a lot of ways, we do overuse these nominalizations and these adjectives when we could be using verbs instead and convey exactly the same information, but in a way that is much more direct and easier for people to understand.
Mignon Fogarty: Yeah. No, I've noticed you're really good about not being absolute. Th- there are always so- there's always an exception. So what about active voice or putting who's doing what at the beginning of the sentence?
Iva Cheung: Right. Yeah. One plain language tip that you'll often hear is to prefer the active voice over passive. And of course, passive voice has its place. I'm sure I've used it a ton in our conversation. But again, in a lot of those bureaucratic, academic, legal situations where people do struggle with complex, overly complex language, uh, people tend to overuse passive voice.
And again, passive voice can be more challenging or more cognitively taxing, because people do have to do that mental translation again to figure out, okay, who is actually doing the action and who is receiving the action? Because we are much more familiar with the order where the subject does the verb, right?
Reversing that order can make people have to pause and kind of reverse that before they can understand the sentence. So there are very good reasons for using the passive voice. But once again, this is not to say don't use passive voice, but when you see something written in passive voice, just pause and ask yourself, “would active be better? Would active make the sentence easier to understand and less cognitively taxing?
Mignon Fogarty: Yeah. And I heard you say once that Germanic words are often recommended, but they aren't always the best either.
Iva Cheung: Yeah. Well, I think this comes from the fact that in English we tend to have these pairs of words where one item in that pair would have a Germanic origin, and there's an equivalent kind of synonym from, you know, that comes from Latin. So, I might say I need something that has a Germanic root versus I require something which has a Latinate root.
And the Latinate words tend to be more abstract. They tend to be longer and have more syllables. And because of that, there was a prevailing tip in plain English, plain language circles to prefer the Germanic term over the Latinate term. But really what we're talking about is familiarity.
The reason Germanic terms seem more concrete and concrete and familiar is simply because we use them more. So whatever is most familiar to people, really is what you should be using. So for example, you might be writing for people whose first language is a Romance language like Spanish or French or Italian. And, in those cases, they might find it easier to interpret Latinate words. So that's why it's important also to reach out to them and do some user testing to see what is, what works best for them.
Yeah, I never would've thought of that. It's amazing. What about staying positive? We’re not talking about toxic positivity, but using positive instructions.
Iva Cheung: Yeah, that is also a common plain language tip, and that's to use the affirmative whenever we can to stay positive, to state something in the affirmative as opposed to negative, right? So instead of saying, "Don't go outside," we might say, "Stay inside." And the reason the negative can be more cognitively taxing is what we're doing is we're holding a concept in our working memory, and we have to negate it, right?
And so that's sort of a two-step process that creates a lot more mental work for people. And this is especially true for people who might have dementia, traumatic brain injury, certain learning disabilities. It is just less cognitively taxing in general to be using the affirmative if you have that option versus a negative framing.
Mignon Fogarty: Well, I think this has given people a lot to work with, to think about, and to start with. I mean, plain language, you know, it's this thing that people get wrapped up in. I have found that, like, learning the principles of plain language, I feel like has made me a better writer. And in a lot of ways, plain language, it just is, it's just better writing. It's not, it's not dumbing things down. It's not simplifying things.
Iva Cheung: Yeah, that's also a pervasive myth that plain language is about oversimplifying something and diluting it to the point where, you know, it's no longer accurate. But hopefully with the examples that we talked about today you can see that we're not really changing the meaning at all, right?
We're just presenting the information in a way that's easier to digest. And this also goes to design and how we might present information that, you know, if you're choosing, let's say, between using a list versus a narrative paragraph there are a lot of advantages if you have a list to actually break it out into a visual list, right?
And what you're doing when you put something into a list is that first of all, you're giving people a visual cue that it's a list, right? Whereas if everything is in a narrative paragraph, you might be having to hunt down the semicolons or the commas to figure out where each item begins and ends. Whereas if it's in an orderly list, you can tell where each item begins and ends. So visually, you're already telling people, "Okay, brace yourselves. This is a list coming." The list also kind of automatically brings in a lot of white space, and in plain language design, white space is very important. Research on usability and readability has shown that if something is verbally dense, so if it's very confusingly written, people might start reading and then give up.
Whereas if something looks visually dense, if it looks like it's going to be hard to read, some people won't engage at all. So it's important to be visually welcoming, and one of the ways to do that and to make it less overwhelming and intimidating is to incorporate white space. So when we've got a list, we've got all of that white space, we've got visual cues of when things begin and end, so that you can sort of prepare yourselves to read one item, process that in your working memory, make that schema, and then clear it and make room for the next item on that list, right?
Mignon Fogarty: Yes.
Iva Cheung: So that's one example of something that we can do in design to make things easier. Another example of plain language design is to use headings. And this is because, when people are reading documents to try to find information, they're not necessarily reading everything. They're scanning, right? So they're doing a kind of superficial scan of the headings to see whether something is relevant to them. And they might be skipping the sections that aren't relevant. And so if you make the headings short and descriptive and make them look very different from the body text so that people know they're looking at a heading, then you're just making the, uh, document easier for them to navigate so they can find what they need.
Mignon Fogarty: Yeah. I'm thinking about that ice cream machine you mentioned earlier. If I have a broken ice cream machine and I'm pulling out the manual, I'm just, I'm scanning through it, looking for the part. Why, why can't I get my ice cream? Well, Iva Cheung, thank you so much for all these incredibly useful tips about plain language writing.
Where can people find you if they wanna, I don't know, hire you for work or find out more about what you do?
Iva Cheung: You can find me at ivacheung.com. I'm also on Bluesky at ivacheng.com
Mignon Fogarty: Thank you so much.
Iva Cheung: Thanks for having me
Mignon Fogarty: You bet. And for our Grammarpaloozians, Iva is also a very well-known cartoonist in the editing world. So we are gonna talk about her cartoons in the Grammarpalooza bonus section. So stay tuned for that if you are a supporter. If you are, we thank you. If not, maybe you can think about being a supporter at patreon.com/grammargirl. But either way, we appreciate you listening. Thank you for being here today. That's all.