Plain English is writing that a reader understands on the first pass, without needing to reread a sentence to find the subject or unpick a string of abstract nouns. It's not writing with fewer ideas in it, and it's not writing pitched at a lower reading age. A report can carry a complicated argument and still be plain, because plainness is about how the sentence is built.

Why a reading age score misses the point

Readability formulas work by counting syllables per word and words per sentence, and they will happily reward a sentence that has been chopped into fragments even when the chopping has made it harder to follow. A short word can still be vague, an unnamed "issue" standing in for the actual problem, and a short sentence can still dodge the question of who did what to whom. The score tells you something about surface difficulty. It tells you nothing about whether the sentence says what the writer meant.

Simple versus simplistic

Simple writing states the relationship between two facts directly: X happened because Y. Simplistic writing removes one of the facts to make the sentence shorter, and the reader is left with a claim that is no longer quite true. Cutting "the department missed the deadline because the supplier's delivery was delayed by six weeks" down to "the department missed the deadline" is shorter, and it is also a different, less accurate claim. The test for a good cut is not length. It is whether the sentence still carries the same information it carried before.

GOV.UK as a worked example

The GOV.UK style guide is a useful worked example of plain English applied to writing that carries real weight: guidance that has to be understood by readers with no time to reread it, on subjects such as tax, benefits and visas, where a misread sentence has consequences. It favours the active voice, short paragraphs with the point at the start, and everyday words over formal ones. The same discipline holds for a report, a proposal or a briefing note: the writer already understands the subject, so the effort of plain English is spent on the reader's behalf.

Most inflated sentences fail for the same handful of reasons: a short word has been swapped for a long one, a verb has been turned into a noun, or a phrase is doing the work a single word could do. None of this needs a rewrite. It needs a short list of substitutions, applied consistently, and a source to check them against when you are not sure.

Words that add length without adding meaning

Reports and emails collect a stock of words that sound formal but carry no more meaning than the plain word they replace. Swapping them does not lower the register of the writing. It removes a layer of padding the reader has to get through before reaching the point.

• utilise becomes use
• commence becomes start
• prior to becomes before
• in order to becomes to
• sufficient becomes enough
• endeavour becomes try
• purchase becomes buy
• ascertain becomes find out
• with regard to becomes about
• at this time becomes now

The verb hiding inside the noun

A nominalisation is a verb that has been turned into a noun: the implementation of instead of implement, made a decision instead of decided. It is a common habit in reports because it sounds more considered, but the sentence usually gets longer and the actor doing the work disappears.

A sentence like “It is anticipated that the implementation of the new system will facilitate a reduction in processing time” has three nominalisations doing the work of one clause. Written as “The new system should cut processing time,” it says the same thing and names who or what is doing the cutting.

Sources worth checking against

The Plain English Campaign publishes an A to Z of alternative words: a list of standard substitutions for the same tired formal terms, organised so you can look one up. The GOV.UK style guide, written by the government's own content designers, applies the same substitutions at scale across real government writing, and is a useful place to see the principle held up against genuine reports and notices.

Neither source will catch every case in your own draft, and both leave room for judgement where the plain word changes the meaning slightly. Where that happens, the plainer word usually still wins, but it is worth reading the sentence aloud both ways before deciding. For more on catching this kind of padding across a longer piece, see the guide on writing at work.