Q & A with Dave Fox from the Word Centre

Dave Fox is a “plain English” expert and someone I have got to know well.

He is an authority figure on how to write in a way that makes every-day written communication much easier to understand.

Dave’s company the Word Centre, is one of our partner organisations.? He saves organisations thousands of pounds each year by improving their documents and making them clearer in a language style that appeals to readers.

As I wrote in a recent article this is about using simple, everyday words to get a point across and not using corporate buzz words to impress others.

Concise wins.???

?In a recent conversation with Dave, I asked him these questions.?

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Hi Dave, can you tell me in a few sentences what you do?

Thanks Pete. Yes, of course. I help organisations save huge amounts of money by showing them how to write in plain English to their customers, prospects and their own colleagues. We train people face to face and by our e-learning course, and we also edit documents into plain English for all kinds of organisations.

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Why does this save organisations money?

Simply because the cost of poorly written documents is enormous. Readers tend to ignore them altogether or give up partway through, so this can mean that you need to send lots of reminders. Or you get large numbers of unnecessary calls or messages asking for clarification. If you are offering or selling something, you get really disappointing results because people don’t understand the benefits.

If you use plain English, you’re much more likely to connect with your reader straight away and get the results you’re after.

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How do people benefit from going on one of your courses?

They’ll find it easier to write clearly and get their point across quickly. This saves people so much time and stress. They’ll find they won’t have to chase people up, or answer calls and emails from readers who didn’t understand what they were trying to say.

It’s a good way to stand out from the crowd too. Senior managers notice people who can put ideas across in a way they can absorb quickly and easily - they don’t have time for anything other than plain English!

But I also think one major benefit is that of confidence building, especially for younger delegates. They will soon realise that people who 'write well' don't use big words, jargon and long sentences. In other words, the simple style they are probably using now is the ideal base for their future development. They will not be impressed by the jargon merchants and wafflers they will meet in their future careers, still less treat them as role models and try to imitate them.

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What problems do you encounter when reviewing companies’ documents?

The same ones, over and over again! It’s amazing how business writers tend to make the same mistakes whatever field or industry they work in.

Overall, I think the biggest problem is that writers don’t think through first what they want to say, and what they want to happen when the reader gets their message. As a result, the document can be doomed to failure the moment they start to write. The writing is likely to be disorganised, unfocused and long winded. Readers tend to give up fairly quickly when faced with that type of style.

The other big mistake they make is to write the document from their own point of view, rather than the reader’s. So the reader may not realise at first what the message has to do with them - again, this is a big reason why people stop reading past the first couple of sentences.

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How else can people improve their writing style? (non - course related)

By reading as much good-quality writing as they can. So that means the output from ‘quality’ newspapers, and from professional fiction and non-fiction writers. All these people have to engage their readers very quickly, and keep them reading. If they didn’t, they’d soon be out of a job. So you’ll have all the attributes of writing style that make for easy reading - everyday language, short sentences, a direct style and so on.

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?Three quick tips to help people write better are….

Plan first, bearing in mind your readers’ needs, their likely reading skills, and what you want from the document.

Once you know what you’re going to write, ask yourself ‘what would I say if I was trying to get this message across to these readers face to face?’. This will give you the words you need.

When you’ve finished, read it out loud. Does it sound like you? Did the words flow easily or did you stumble over the odd word or phrase? These could be the places where you’ve used jargon or more complicate language. Again, ask yourself what you would say instead.

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What do you enjoy most about what you do?

I enjoy all of it, because I love working with people and with words. But I think I get the biggest kick when people feed back their own successes.

It might be that they no longer get puzzled phone calls about a document they send out by the thousands. Or the error rate on one of their forms goes from 35% down to almost zero. Perhaps they used to have to follow up 40% of their bills by sending a reminder, and now it’s about 5%.

And I think that’s the important thing. It’s only right to use plain English when you write to someone. But once organisations realise the improved results they get from using plain English, they usually ask themselves ‘why didn’t we do this years ago?’.

Thank you, Dave for your time today and for telling me a bit more about what you do. ?I really enjoyed it. ?????

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If you want to know more about Dave and how he can help your business please visit Plain English wordcentre.co.uk