Our plain language philosophy
At Hemisphere, we advocate plain language, and use it in our documentation. Here's the definition of plain language from Wikipedia:
"Plain language, also referred to as simple language or clear language, is clear, modern, unpretentious language carefully written to ease understanding. It is a reaction to the alleged gobbledygook (aka Legal English) used by lawyers and others to impress or confuse rather than communicate. It distinguishes gobbledygook from useful jargon employed as a shorthand among those who understand it."
Why we use plain language
During our time in the online and information/technology industries, we have read and — yes, admittedly — written a great many documents that were more about assuring the reader that the author must indeed be very clever, given their unrelenting use of jargon, flowcharts, process diagrams and so on.
We didn't like reading these documents, but we wrote others just like them because, well... if we didn't, we might look less capable than our competitors. More often than not, these documents — some of which were specifications that took many days to write — were never even (properly) read by their recipients because they were overlong and confusing.
We haven't written that type of documentation for quite some time, and, where-ever possible, we try to avoid reading it. Rest assured, if you receive a quote, an estimate, a memorandum of understanding, a business requirements document or even an email, we'll be using plain language.
Find out more about plain language
Interested in finding out more about plain language? Start out by reading the rest of the article we quoted from, or visit The Plain Language Association.
To work out whether you need to embrace plain language, try running some of your documentation through Neil Ingebrigtsen's Clarity Rating Calculator.