Learning to write plainly, and why specialists resist it
Writing plain English is a skill learned gradually, over years of work on texts and against the habits of a scientific training. Many scientists and specialist writers find writing for lay readers hard, some see little reason to do it, and plain writing asks them to give up some of the precision their work is built on.
Coming to plain language and learning it
An author's editor at a NASA centre came to plain language through informed consent: while working with a group doing research with human subjects, she looked for information about writing informed consent documents, found the Plain Language Association International and became a member. One of her chief concerns is being both accurate and understandable when communicating scientific information to members of the public.
Few medical writers are natural writers, so writing plain English is something they have to learn with discipline and application. The ability to write plain English has nothing to do with being a native speaker of English. One experienced writer thinks that colleagues who use English as a second language sometimes have an easier time writing plain English, because most are used to strict rules that have to be observed in their first language and to applying new rules to simplify their writing, and because they have much less interference from colloquial English than native speakers.
Orwell's rules never to use a long word where a short one will do and, if it is possible to cut a word out, always to cut it out are not natural and take time to learn, and the learning is gradual: a writer has to work on texts for years before most of what they decree becomes instinctive. A first draft, even an experienced writer's, rarely fulfils Orwell's rules and is rarely in the plain English that Martin Cutts advocates in the Oxford Guide to Plain English, and even a second draft will not follow all the rules. Refining a text is laborious and time consuming. Blaise Pascal wrote, in essence, that he would have written a shorter letter had he had the time, and in the same writer's view Orwell had a leisure that medical writers rarely have. The writer must ensure there is time for refining when preparing a manuscript for publication, a patient information sheet or a website, but rarely has that luxury when writing a clinical study protocol or report, or a response to a request from the authorities. Writers who consistently train themselves, little by little, to observe the rules find the rules become automatic, and realising that they are observing them spontaneously is satisfying, because they know they are saving time and writing better at once.
Rules for a beginner
A primer on medical writing for health professionals encourages informal writing and plain English, holding that informal writing is personal and easier to comprehend, yet must preserve the accurate and scientific. Its author puts the point simply: don't use big words, talk plainly. Its guidelines for beginners are to use shorter sentences, use familiar words, avoid the passive voice, use strong nouns and verbs, and use English forms instead of Latin.
Why specialists find lay writing hard
Many academics find it difficult to write for lay audiences, and not everyone can blog like Martin Robbins or write informative pieces for lay readers like Stephen Hawking or E.O. Wilson.
As the editor of EMWA's journal described the field in 2015, most medical writers do highly technical work, preparing regulatory or clinical documents or materials for medical doctors. In the same editor's view, writing for lay audiences is different and does not come naturally to most of them, because they are often locked into their specialties and a specialised way of writing, and because most started their careers as scientists.
One experienced medical writer holds that medical writers used to technical language in their everyday work live in a bubble, and says that he himself has to rewire how he addresses concepts to people outside it. The struggle in writing plainly is that the writer has to be willing to sacrifice some precision to be more understandable, which is hard for most medical writers because they are scientifically trained and science is built on precision and accuracy. But science that is not understood, or worse misunderstood, has no value, so some allowances must be made. The same writer advises writers who wish to write in plain language to let go of some precision while embracing accuracy and understandability, holding that what is important is not to be misunderstood.
Scientists are used to expressing uncertainty or demonstrating validity through statistics, which can be hard to translate into lay language: a slight but statistically significant difference in growth rate, for example, is difficult to express in lay terms. The problem gets worse when results conflict and no straightforward conclusion can be drawn. Although most lay readers have no knowledge of statistics and no interest in them, many scientists find it difficult to leave such details out, feeling that they are needed to transmit their message accurately. Science journalists, who often act as a bridge between scientists and lay readers, have often been criticised for oversimplifying or even filtering information: could, might and may are not necessarily good substitutes for carefully formulated statements, and powerful evidence or a breakthrough can sound exaggerated.
Why some scientists see little reason to write plainly
Some scientists write abstrusely on purpose, to prove their intellectual superiority, and some think that what academics write does not have to be understood by everyone, quoting Stephen Jay Gould's remark that science selects for poor writing. Although many scientists blog to bring science to the public, others find writing for the masses a waste of time or think that lay summaries are not a good use of a researcher's time. In an online research forum discussing how writing a textbook differs from writing a peer-reviewed article, one respondent admitted that writing a textbook had been one of his most difficult accomplishments, yet held that "anyone" can write a textbook whereas few can publish in high-impact journals. One writer on the subject sees in this greater emphasis on peer-reviewed articles a culture of exclusivity around academia, strengthened by the publish-or-perish tenure process, so that writing for lay audiences can be professionally risky and offer scientists little incentive.
In one trainer's workshops on scientific writing for non-native English speakers, scientists whose first language is not English are more resistant than native speakers to the idea of simplifying language. They are quite comfortable writing implementing a learning process for teach, the ghastly phraseology that has crept into scientific discourse seems normal to them, and they resist the idea that they can write the way they speak.
Training scientists to write for lay readers
By 2015 Cancer Help UK and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had recognised the importance of specialised training in writing for lay audiences and, understanding that researchers find such writing hard, had provided their teams with training. Some researchers plead for a lay writing course in the curricula of undergraduate and graduate science programmes. One writer on the subject holds that scientists should be trained early enough not only in how to communicate with lay audiences but also in the importance of the associated values, namely that informing the public is a duty and not a time-consuming downgrading of scientific work. The same writer holds that scientists should also be made aware that communicating their work directly to the public is a positive step towards eliminating the impact of misinterpretation or misrepresentation by the press, and that lay communication is rewarding and academically productive because it is the best way to gain public support. She expects the cultural change this needs to take place through time and the re-education of the new generation of scientists.
The path towards lay communication will not be simple, but scientists who are willing to learn to balance accuracy and accessibility can overcome its pitfalls. Not all scientists are gifted writers, but because they are trained to think clearly they should be able to write clearly and share their enthusiasm with the public as well as with their peers. Cooperation between scientists and organisations can strengthen the commitment to engage the public and to make scientific information accessible.