Simple is better

If, in the near future, you can read your credit card statement, thank the Federal Reserve. The regulatory agency is proposing new rules that would require credit card companies to make several changes in credit card bills and solicitations, including making them easier to read.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is calling for "greater clarity" in these documents, which are typically loaded with minuscule print and language so dense you need a machete to chop through to its real meaning. The new regs will force companies to say what they really mean by using simple language and straightforward sentence structure.

I wish all business communications focused on that aim. One of the benchmarks of effective communications is simplicity, yet it's one of the most ignored principles in business writing, which is too often jammed with jargon, with complex, meandering sentences that lead no where and with a style that seems as if the writer is not trying to communicate but to confound.

What good is a piece of writing that is so confusing that no one can understand what it's trying to say? The time of everyone involved in such a communication is wasted, yet you see it every day.

In the wonderful movie Philadelphia, Denzel Washington played a street-savvy lawyer who would often tell people who were trying to convey some complicated information to him to "explain it to me like I'm a fifth grader." I often remember that line and have even used it when I'm interviewing a subject about a complex topic. It usually helps the subject understand the need to break things down into simple terms, though occasionally it exposes the fact that the subject doesn't fully understand what he or she is trying to say and is using bloated, confusing language to hide the fact. The person might even resent or resist your effort to get them to simplify. So be it. It's more important to work that out through the writing process than to parrot the gobbledygook the subject is using and spread the confusion around.

Though in the case of credit card companies it's taking a law to compel them to simplify their communications, your business or organization shouldn't wait to be similarly prodded.