Plain Language as Substance
The substance survives the simplicity. A reader with no context should still get the gist of the card.
Short words carry real reasoning when the thinking is clear. That is the V3.4 readability cut in one line.
Most mobile readers stop reading at the third sentence. The research is consistent:
is the soft cap a paragraph should target on a phone. Past sixty, eye-tracking studies show the reader gives up before the period.
Five bridge patterns. A V3.4 card bridges its sections with one of five named shapes. The dominant form is an eyebrow plus tagline pair, in which the eyebrow names the topic and the tagline lands the claim.
The other four shapes. They are the two-sentence haiku, the "Built / Designed / Engineered" imperative, the inline "Now you can…" kicker, and the single-word eyebrow. All five name the content; none of them name the position.
| Before V3.4 | After V3.4 | |
|---|---|---|
| Paragraph cap | 75 words, 4 sentences (G-8) | 60 words, 3 sentences (G-12) |
| Grade target | (unspecified) | Flesch–Kincaid ≤ 9 (G-13) |
| Section bridge | (unspecified) | Five-pattern vocabulary (G-14) |
| Takeaway | Walls of valid prose | Beats that breathe |
The cap drops from seventy-five to sixty words. The grade target moves from implicit to measured.
Plain is not thin. Hemingway's prose tests at grade five because it carries real weight in plain words, not because the words are plain. The discipline is shorter words for the same reasoning: never shorter reasoning for shorter words.
- ✓Draft each block's content first; ignore the bolded lead-clause until the prose is real
- ✓Run the validator's readability check on every prose block (grade level, reading ease)
- ✓Count sentences (≤ 3) and words (≤ 60) per block; split when you are over
- ✓Add the bolded lead-clause last: 2 to 6 words, noun phrase or imperative
- ✓For each section bridge, pick one of the five patterns in G-14; never write "In the next section"
Clarity of writing follows clarity of thought. Same hours, same material; the difference is whether the reader still has it in six months.
- Apple HIG: Writing guidelines (Choose simple, plain language. Prioritize clarity.)
- The Economist Style Guide: five rules for plain English (Orwell heritage)
- Nielsen Norman Group: Eye-tracking studies on mobile paragraph length (2018, 2021)
- CDC Plain Language standard: paragraph length recommendations
- WCAG 2.2 SC 1.4.12 and 3.1.5: line-height and reading-level floors