Park on Stonegate Road at sunrise, Chapel Allerton in Leeds. Photo by Chris Kenworthy

Imagine you own a spacious stretch of lush green parkland, fringed by mellowing golden leaved trees stretching out to a horizon where it kisses the fresh blue sky sitting above it.You want people to enjoy the space but there are a few simple yet important rules you need them to follow.

So you put up a sign. And what do you write on that sign? The most convoluted instructional text you can possibly think of, written in a passive voice where your simple rules are buried beneath layers of complicated sounding legalese. And for good measure you omit who the sign is meant for and who wrote it.

I’m reminded of some introductory rhetoric to a writing course I once attended, led by a kindly gentleman from the Plain English Campaign:

“There’s a time and place for convoluted English language and long may it continue. But that’s just it: there’s a time and a place.”

Language labyrinth

Complex English language such as legalese and more recently, ever omnipotent corporate lexicon, can be a beautiful thing. One can lead the reader into a paragraph peppered with sub-clauses and premises they could never hope to understand without expert translation (that being the object of the former) or perplex a prospective client with the intricacies of process thus projecting an appearance of knowledge, authority and control (as per the latter). Did you follow all that? Hopefully not – that’s my point.

The time and place for such elaborate language is not when you want to be clear, concise and unambiguous in your message, like on a public sign for example. Moreover, a sign which needs to be read and understood by a diverse readership which no doubt covers a broad spectrum of reading ages. Let’s look at how the sign might look in plain English:

“You must not ride motor cycles and horses or play golf on this land. By order of Leeds City Council”

There you have it, in active voice. Much simpler isn’t it? I suppose you could argue against the ‘by order’ part as a signatory to the message, I left it in to add an element of authority to the message along with some context of who is enforcing the rules.

Talkin’ ‘bout my generation

I’m by no means a grand master of the English Language, merely a passionate enthusiast carving out a living by throwing words at the web in the hope that some of them stick to an engaging adhesive of inspiration and conversion.

I’m of the generation taught in the implicit use of language rather than bestowed with an understanding of its constructs, syntactic models and delicate nuances. These things we can use practically – but ask for a nice juicy past-participle and we’ll go cross-eyed.

Improving my French has helped a great deal, in fact I’d recommend brushing up on another language to anyone looking for a deeper understanding of tense, verb tables, prepositions and other muted heroes of the English language that have been left to gather dust in grammar books of yore.

A quick lesson

If you think you’ve found the right time and place, try and write instructional text in active voice. A great place to practice this is in your copy for a registration process or sequence of steps you need people to follow.

Just put the person or thing first, then what they must or mustn’t do (the verb) to or with what (an object). There’s a school of thought which suggests we fall into a habit of using passive voice to deflect blame from ourselves “the window was broken by a football” rather than “I broke the window.” I digress, now is not the time for childhood confessions.

If this is all a bit high-brow and you’d prefer to just have some fun then play with the Plain English Campaign’s gobbledygook generator and squeeze out some corporate nonsense

Upon reflection

Of course people actually paying attention to the original sign and acting upon it is a whole new matter, as exhibited by one ‘eht’ who, not only took the opportunity to indulge his gaffer tape addiction, expressed his disapproval by scrawling his name at the foot of the notice.

Honestly, people really should know better than to daub mindless text on public signs.

Chris Kenworthy is a photographer and copywriter, his web site is at http://www.chriskenworthy.co.uk.