No. Plain English is a low benchmark. 

Focusing on plain English made sense when people in business thought absurdly formal language was the professional way to write. They had no problem with: 'We wish to advise...', 'regarding our correspondence of the 17th inst.' and 'We enclose our brochure for your perusal'.  It was a strange, artificial language described by a government-appointed committee of gurus in Britain as an 'evil tradition'. (And that was more than 100 years ago.)

Business writing has moved on. Plain English is now common, especially in large organisations with communications teams.

So what else do we need?

• Clarity for a start. We can achieve more clarity with simple, direct sentences and the active voice. 
• The skills to engage our readers. We want them to read and remember everything we write, not skim and forget.

How do we engage them?

Plain English is essential, but not enough.

We can engage them by thinking of them as we write. No, make that being obsessed with our readers as we write - in every word, sentence and paragraph.

Ask yourself questions as you prepare and write. 'Would they know what this email, letter or report is about? (Tell them early.)  'Would they care about my message? How can we help them care? How much do they know already? Would they understand this word, jargon or idea? Would they know what to do next?' 

We can engage them by adding humans. 'You' should be top of your list, but any words about humans will help: 'Lucy, our team, engineers, senior managers, the staff, residents, ratepayers'. (You get the idea). Even things associated with people can help you engage your readers: 'your email, the engineers' report, the executive team's meeting'. 

Our brains are hard-wired to find people interesting - especially us. But human interest is just one of the benefits.  Adding humans encourages us to write in the active voice, We are more likely to write about people doing things, rather than just focusing on the event. 'Lucy wrote the report on Thursday', not 'The report was written on Thursday.' 

When we add humans we are more likely to write in everyday language, because that's what we are used to in conversation.

Won't adding humans take more words?

Yes, but those words are worth it.

Interested in a workshop to improve your team's writing skills?