Plain English and tone of voice

Write like you’re talking to someone one-on-one, but with the authority of someone who can help them.

Many different kinds of people live, work, do business or travel in Buckinghamshire or visit the county and so it’s important that our content can be understood by everyone.

Do not use formal or long words when short ones will do. For example, use ‘buy’ instead of ‘purchase’, ‘help’ instead of ‘assist’ and ‘about’ instead of ‘approximately’.

We lose people’s trust if we write in internal jargon or ‘buzzwords’. Often these words can lead to misunderstanding or empty, meaningless text. Consider what you are trying to explain and break the term down. Be open and specific.

Do not use the word 'please' as we should be telling or advising residents what to do and it can imply a choice. Do not use phrases such as 'please note' as it can make important information harder to quickly identify and waste a users time.

Write conversationally. We should use the same language as our users to make things easy for anyone to read and understand. A good way to do this is to follow this process:

1. Think of someone you know who is in your target audience
2. Imagine them sitting with you
3. Read out what you’re writing to them
4. Decide whether you would talk to them like this

Use plain language to make sure people can understand what you are trying to communicate.

We follow GOV.UK and aim for a reading age of 9 so our content can be understood by as many people as possible. You can check how readable your content is using apps like Hemingway or Readable.io.

Keep your audience in mind. In general, the people reading the website don’t work at the council, so they will not understand internal jargon, specialist language or the acronyms you use with team mates and colleagues. If you need to use technical language that isn’t familiar to your users, you should explain it the first time you use it.

Address the user as ‘you’ where possible and use the active rather than passive voice. This means the user will feel like you’re talking directly to them and is less formal.

For example, say ‘You can apply online’ rather than ‘It is possible for Buckinghamshire residents to apply online’.

If you’re writing content for a specialist audience, you still need to make sure everyone can understand it. The best way to do this is by using common words and breaking down specialist jargon to explain it better where possible.

Legal content can still be written in plain English. It's especially important that users can easily understand this kind of content. When evidence shows there’s a clear user need for including a legal term, always explain it in plain English.

Contact the webteam via ServiceNow if you need to:

• ask a question
• get help with writing content
• make a suggestion for something we need to include in this guidance

You can find more guidance on writing content in the content design resources in the GOV.UK Service Manual.