Plain Language Writing Course

Course Highlights

This plain language writing course will:

• Explain the Plain Writing Act of 2010, what it requires of federal agencies, and where the current guidelines live.
• Define what plain language is and, just as important, what it is not.
• Build skills for analyzing an audience and writing to their specific needs rather than to a general reader.
• Cover the verb, noun, and pronoun choices that most often make government writing harder to read than it needs to be.
• Address sentence and paragraph structure, including how to break up dense text without losing precision.
• Introduce visual aids, headings, lists, and layout tools that improve a document’s navigability.
• Examine the specific demands of writing for the web, where readers scan before they read.

Program Overview

The Plain Writing Act of 2010 requires federal agencies to write new and substantially revised public-facing documents in plain language. That requirement covers documents that inform the public about services and benefits, documents the public needs to obtain those services and benefits, and documents that explain how to comply with requirements an agency administers or enforces. The law is clear. Compliance, in practice, is considerably harder.

Plain language is a discipline. It demands that a writer understand the reader before picking up a pen, choose words for their clarity rather than their formality, construct sentences that deliver information in the order a reader can receive it, and organize a document so that the structure itself guides the reader through the content. Those skills do not come automatically, and government writers face particular pressures that work against them: the need for precision, the pull of agency convention, the risk of simplifying in ways that create legal ambiguity, and the challenge of writing for a public audience that ranges from subject matter experts to members of the public with no prior familiarity with the relevant program or regulation.

This full-day onsite workshop addresses all of it. The day opens by establishing what the law requires and what current federal guidance looks like, then moves through the full range of plain language skills: audience analysis, active voice, word choice, sentence structure, paragraph organization, and the use of visual tools to help readers navigate a document. Each section builds on the one before it, and participants apply every concept to real documents before the day moves on.

The workshop closes with a dedicated section on writing for the web, where plain language demands are sharpest and the consequences of ignoring them most immediate. Online readers arrive with a specific question. They scan the page for an answer. They leave if they cannot find one. Writing for that behavior requires habits that differ from writing a policy document or a formal letter, and most agencies have not yet built those habits into their web content process. This workshop addresses both the print and the digital side of the plain language obligation and gives writers the tools to meet the standard in either context.

The following outline highlights some of the course’s learning points. As part of your training program, we will modify content as needed to meet your business objectives. Upon request, we will provide you with a copy of the participant materials prior to the session(s).

Program Objectives

At the program’s conclusion, participants should be able to:

• Explain the requirements of the Plain Writing Act of 2010 and identify where current federal plain language guidance lives.
• Analyze an intended audience and adjust language, structure, and detail level accordingly.
• Use active voice consistently and identify the passive constructions that most often appear in government writing.
• Avoid hidden verbs and choose direct, strong language over nominalized, bureaucratic phrasing.
• Make deliberate choices about nouns and pronouns that make documents clearer and more accessible.
• Simplify sentence structure without sacrificing accuracy or completeness.
• Organize paragraphs around a single idea and sequence information so readers can follow it.
• Use headings, lists, and visual aids to help readers navigate a document efficiently.
• Apply plain language principles to web content, including how to write for readers who scan.

Workshop Modules

How Did I Get Here?: The Plain Writing Act and Its Purpose

The workshop opens by establishing the legal and practical context for everything that follows. The Plain Writing Act of 2010 requires federal agencies to write new and substantially revised public-facing documents in plain language, and it gives the public the right to provide feedback when they cannot understand what an agency has produced. This part of the day examines what the law requires, which documents it covers, and what compliance actually looks like in practice. The group will also discuss where current guidance lives. PlainLanguage.gov was retired in 2023, and while the Federal Plain Language Guidelines remain available in full through an archived repository, the active home for official plain language resources is now Digital.gov’s Plain Language Guide Series. Participants will leave this opening discussion knowing what they are required to do, why it matters, and where to go when they need guidance.

The Audience: Writing for Different People

Plain language is not a style. It is a relationship between a document and its reader. A document written in plain language for one audience may be entirely inaccessible to another, and the same agency often serves readers who range from subject matter experts to members of the public with limited familiarity with the relevant program or regulation. This part of the workshop examines how to identify who will read a document, what they already know, what they need from the document, and how they will use it once they have read it. The group will work through the challenge of writing for multiple audiences within a single document, including how to sequence information, where to define terms, and how to signal to each reader that the document is working for them. Participants will practice applying an audience analysis to a real document before any writing or revising begins.

Verb, That’s What’s Happening: Using Action Words

Government writing has a verb problem. The most common version takes a perfectly good verb, turns it into a noun, and then builds a sentence around it: not “we analyzed” but “we conducted an analysis of.” The result is longer, weaker, and harder to read. This part of the day focuses on verbs as the most powerful tool a writer has, and on the habits that drain that power. The group will work through how to identify hidden verbs in their own writing, how to restore them to their active form, and how to use the active voice consistently. Participants will also examine the passive voice directly, including when it appears in government writing, why it makes agency communications harder to understand, and the rare situations where it is genuinely appropriate. The emphasis stays practical, with exercises drawn from real government documents.

Nouns and Pronouns: Making Smart Choices

The words a writer chooses to name things and people shape how accessible a document is at the sentence level. Government writing tends toward long, formal nouns when shorter ones exist, toward “the applicant” when “you” would work better, and toward vague references when a specific noun would be clearer. This discussion examines the noun and pronoun choices that appear most consistently in unclear government documents and gives participants a framework for making better ones. The group will work through when to use “you” and “we” in public-facing documents, how to handle references to agencies and programs without creating a tangle of abbreviations, and how specific, concrete nouns make a document feel more direct and useful to the reader who needs to act on it.

Escaping the 50-Pound Sentence: Simplifying Sentences for Clarity

Long sentences are not inherently unclear, but most long sentences in government writing are unclear for the same reasons: too many ideas, too many qualifications, and a structure that asks the reader to hold too much in mind before arriving at the main point. This part of the workshop examines what makes sentences hard to process and gives participants practical techniques for breaking up dense text without losing accuracy. The group will work through how to identify the main point of a sentence and lead with it, how to handle qualifications and exceptions without burying the core message, and how sentence length variation affects reading pace and comprehension. Participants will revise passages from real documents, applying the principles directly to the kind of writing they produce every day.

Paragraph Power: Structuring for Understanding

A paragraph built around a single idea, with a clear topic sentence and evidence or detail that supports it, is one of the most effective tools a government writer has. Most government paragraphs are not built that way. They combine multiple ideas, bury the main point, or sequence information in an order that reflects how the writer thought rather than how the reader needs to receive it. This discussion examines how to construct paragraphs that move a reader forward rather than asking them to sort through material to find what matters. The group will work through how to write topic sentences that do real work, how to sequence supporting detail, and how to recognize when a paragraph is trying to do too much. Participants will apply these principles in a revision exercise on a document they find genuinely difficult to read.

Show and Tell: Using Visual Aids and Illustrations for Clarity

Plain language is not only about the words. A document’s visual organization, its headings, its use of lists, the amount of white space on the page, the presence or absence of tables and illustrations, shapes how a reader experiences the text before they read a single sentence. This part of the day examines how to use visual tools to support plain language rather than to decorate a document. The group will work through when a bulleted list serves the reader better than a paragraph, how to write headings that function as navigation rather than labels, when a table communicates a relationship more clearly than prose, and what poor visual organization signals to a reader about the document’s usability. Participants will evaluate formatting decisions in real documents and practice restructuring a dense page using the visual tools covered in the discussion.

The Trap-Free Web: Writing for the Internet

Online readers do not read the way print readers do. They scan. They arrive with a specific question, look for the answer, and leave if they cannot find it quickly. A document written for print and moved online without revision does not serve that reader well, and most agency websites contain exactly that kind of content. This closing discussion examines what online readers need from government content and how to write for that behavior without sacrificing accuracy or completeness. The group will work through how to front-load information so that the most important content appears first, how to write descriptive headings that let a scanner find what they need, how to handle links and calls to action, and how to adapt a print document for the web rather than simply publishing it in a different format. Participants will work through a revision exercise on a real web page before the session closes.

Target Audience

This workshop is designed for groups that want to:

• Meet the requirements of the Plain Writing Act and produce documents the public can understand and use.
• Improve the clarity, accessibility, and readability of public-facing agency communications.
• Build a shared plain language standard across a team, office, or agency.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is this workshop designed for?

This workshop is well-suited for anyone who writes public-facing documents in a federal agency, including policy writers, program officers, communications staff, web content managers, and anyone whose written work reaches members of the public. It works equally well for writers new to plain language requirements, and experienced writers who want a more structured approach to applying the guidelines consistently.

Does this course cover the Plain Writing Act specifically?

Yes. The workshop opens with a direct discussion of the Plain Writing Act of 2010, what it requires, which documents it covers, and where the current federal plain language guidelines live. Writers leave that discussion knowing their obligations and knowing where to turn when they have questions about specific documents.

PlainLanguage.gov seems to be gone. Where do the guidelines live now?

The site was retired in 2023 as part of a government-wide effort to consolidate federal websites. The Federal Plain Language Guidelines are not gone. They are archived in full in a public GitHub repository, and selected content has moved to Digital.gov’s Plain Language Guide Series. The workshop addresses this directly and gives participants a clear picture of where to find current, authoritative guidance.

Is this course only for federal government writers?

No. The workshop draws on federal plain language guidelines because those guidelines are among the most thorough and well-developed resources available, and compliance with the Plain Writing Act applies specifically to federal agencies. That said, state and local government writers, nonprofit communications staff, and anyone who produces public-facing documents benefits from the same principles. We can tailor the examples and exercises to the specific context of your organization.

How much of the day is practice versus instruction?

Participants work with real documents throughout the day rather than waiting until the end to practice. Each section includes a revision or drafting exercise connected to the concept just introduced. The goal is for participants to leave having applied every principle to actual text, not just having heard it described.

Is this available as a virtual program?

Yes. A virtual version of this program is available in a multi-segment format. Contact us to discuss options.