In Australia, an occasional traveller was surprised by the large number of non-English place names: Coogee, Geelong, Jamberoo, Morawa, Yarraand so on. Particularly playful-sounding were replicated names likeBallaballa, Grong Grong, Kurri Kurri, Wagga Wagga and rhymed ones like Arrawarra, Turramurra, Tumbi Umbi. Replicated names were so common that questions arose whether they had some grammatical significance. It turned out that plural is expressed by repetition. For example “Wagga” has originally meant ’crow’ and Wagga Wagga ’many crows’, and in turn, Baw means ’echo’ and place name Baw Baw ’echoes’. Has English borrowed other words from Australian Aboriginal languages? Not many, but they are very familiar: kangaroo, koala, dingo, boomerang. All of these, of course, I had to look for on my trip to Australia.

Medical records for patients contain a lot of specialized terms and abbreviations. Surprisingly, only a few people complain about the documents that track their health, even though it’s often difficult to determine the severity of their condition or the proposed treatment. While at the doctor’s, people have the opportunity to ask for clarification, but sometimes questions don’t come to mind, or the answers are forgotten. For issues as vital as health, a person should be able to access and explore his information in plain language whenever it suits him.

Technical terms and abbreviations appear in such documents, even those intended for a patient, when ordinary English equivalents exist: otitis ‘ear infection’, anorexia ’eating disorder’, phobia ‘fear’, amnesia ‘memory loss’, pyrexia ’fever’. A patient can easily make a mistake when the prescription reads prn, sl, or ac. Confusion can also arise from diagnoses. One concerned patient returned to the hospital to ask about “elevated RR” that she seemed to be suffering from, along hypertension – because her patient history didn’t make clear that both terms refer to high blood pressure.

Spoken language and written language are very different things, as you can tell by reading a transcript of actual speech. The spoken word is fragmentary, with lots of repetition, rephrasing, and filler: Do these points… I mean, are these good ones to start with, you know, or what. Speech doesn’t use punctuation, and long strings of words are loosely connected with ”and” or other conjuctions. Often, though, employees transcribing health care dictation from recordings are told to reproduce the speech without any modification. Following that guidance literally would make the instructions very hard for a reader to follow. Journalists, in the same way, are supposed to faithfully report exactly what an interviewee says, even though a word-for-word account in print can make the speaker sound illiterate.

Elsewhere, instant messages, are becoming more like natural speech:Nearly finished reading them they’re cool don’t remember titles I read didn’t read first one. It’ll be interesting to see if this transformation expands to other forms of writing.

According to the dictionary, a bromide is an uninteresting, obvious truth. I encountered a flock of bromides last week while reading a hefty package of EU funding instructions. The instructions are lengthy and ponderous. Along with other baggage, they contain such bromides as “a business startup grant may be issued to start up a new business” and “natural disaster compensation is intended to compensate for damage caused by natural disasters.”

Why do instructions so often start this way? Probably it’s an opening format borrowed from nonfiction writing. The authors may believe than regardless of topic, they should start with a definition — even if it doesn’t add anything. This style crops up in other public-sector writing: “Compensation includes salary and other considerations” and “Employees under certain conditions are entitled to holidays and vacations.”

A definition is one way for a writer to get started, but obvious or unnecessary ones just clutter up the narrative. Even this short piece began with a definition — was it a bromide?

What is common with the Rosetta stone and social media? The mystery of hieroglyphs was solved with the help of the Rosetta stone. The same legal text was written on the stone with hieroglyphs, demotic script, and Greek. The Greek writing allowed scientists to interpret the hieroglyphics in the 1800s; the skill which had been lost since the use ended 300 years AD.

Social media can act as a Rosetta stone in opening difficult official documents. While studying how municipal documents were edited to online texts, it appeared that the readability improved, as the original text was rewritten to newsletter and when the newsletter in turn was modified to social media update. A plain language update can therefore serve as a key for a reader to difficult public sector writings and increases opportunities for meaningful participation. In addition, active government communication is likely to renew official language itself, and thus to improve also the readability of original documents.

Although Finns have the highest literacy rate in the world, research reveals that as many as 500 000 Finnish adults are in the two lowest levels of literacy on a five-point scale. People with poor reading skills risk falling further behind in society; participating as a citizen, or even applying for social benefits, requires the ability to read instructions and complete forms. Facing such barriers, a poor reader can miss the opportunity to apply for aid that would help break through the barrier of marginalization. What’s the solution? Both poor readers and competent ones can benefit from the use of plain language in the public sector. Indeed, important public issues should be communicated through plain language efforts. The first step in making a public document truly public is to make it more inviting to the reader; a lower threshold for comprehension improves the experience for the average citizen. A short document is easier to understand than a lengthy one; familiar words foster understand and create inclusion; clear images illustrate and support the core content. For more detailed help with plain language, see this vocabulary and a useful 5-step checklist. Don’t be shy; simple language never hurt anyone.

The annual Applied Linguistics Symposium took place last weekend at the University of Tampere. The theme was “Language awareness in an increasingly unequal society”. Keynote speaker Ulla Tiililä spoke about reasons for unequal access to government services. Government agencies nowadays are text factories; their main activity is the creation of new policies, plans and documents. For example, the new Finnish health care and social welfare law mentions 40 different kinds of documents: welfare report, cooperation agreement, service promise and so on. The effort to produce all these documents consumes so many staff resources that there is no time for meeting the customer. For example, studies show that many problems related to social services and healthcare stem from how agencies interact with their clients, but little money goes to improving such interaction. Finland’s public sector has spent over 2 billion euros on IT systems, but agency decisions are still based on standardized wording which officials can’t even edit. The main reason for the foolish policy is an inadequate understanding of language and communication. According to Ulla Tiililä “narrow language awareness has evil consequences and an expensive price tag.”

The tone of a message often affects us unconsciously. We respond positively to a friendly email, and negatively to a harsh one. The ability to control and change tone is a demanding task even for an advanced writer. Tone sneaks into a new text from previous messages or existing documents: we like to speak about issues with the same tone as before. Government documents, for example, favor a formal and distant tone, which is often considered to be the proper or official way of speaking.

How do we react to organizations based on tone? The Nielsen Norman Group looked at how a change in tone on a website affected a visitor’s impression of the organization. They varied the tone in four dimensions: funny to serious, casual to informal, irreverent to respectful, and enthusiastic to matter-of fact. According to the study, an organization’s image improved most with a casual, conversational, and moderately enthusiastic tone.

If we want to improve the image of government, we should evaluate official documents on the basis of their tone of voice.

The Tampere city council meeting doesn’t often get the attention it did last Monday. Via its @tamperelive account on Twitter, the city provided live monitoring of a meeting about the introduction of tram service. The result was 2 226 tweets with the #trevaltuusto (“Tampere Council”) hashtag, and 849 with #ratikka (“tram”). Beyond Twitter, the meeting was live-streamed and attracted 24 232 viewers.

Live reporting from a public meeting can be a great thing. It condenses the core content and shares ideas about the issues in manageable doses. Typically, documents for such meetings are hard for citizens to read, while agendas and minutes hew to traditional modes of presentation. Success in reporting via Twitter does require some new ways of thinking: you aren’t going to get the best results by quoting everything each speaker says. Live-tweeting is a summary and not a transcript. Such tweets should convey meaningful content like new arguments, explanations, or points of views. There’s little value in simply mentioning everyone’s name.

Live-tweeting, and the ability to follow a real-time meeting online, are likely to stimulate interest in policy, which is a good thing. Sadly, political games are likely to frustrate that interest: after hours of discussion and debate, the decision on a tram system was postponed to the next meeting.

During a trip to Oulu, I made a quick stop in Stockmann’s department store to buy something warm. At the escalator I encountered not just a choice but a puzzle. According to the sign, the first floor offered women’s wear while the second floor features women’s fashion. I asked other customers what the difference was, but none of them knew for sure. So I asked a salesperson. Her interpretation: “women’s wear” includes accessories like scarves and gloves, while “women’s fashion” focuses on clothing.

Retail signage has the same problem as web page menus. How do you label things so that users make the right choices for themselves? It’s all about usability: how quickly and accurately users are able to find what they want or do what they need to. So the general rule is to use everyday, concrete words for menus, labels, and similar guides.

How do we know which words to use? Usability researcher Jakob Nielsen suggests a kind of card game for research. Write your content items on cards. Have a small group of non-experts sort the cards into piles and then give a name to each pile. This tells you how people naturally understand relationships as well as the names they uses for categories.

If Stockmann’s had done this, they’d have found out that at least for me, “women’s wear” includes both scarves and sweaters, whether they’re “fashion” or not.