Quiz: How Understandable Is Your Writing?

Plain language is a style of communication that ensures readers (or listeners) can understand a message quickly, easily, and completely.

But how do you know if you’re actually using plain language? Surely, just being able to decipher business jargon isn’t good enough on its own. How do you know if the language you use is “plain enough”?

To overcome complex jargon, understandable writing and communication

• uses formatting, bullets, and headings to convey information quickly and easily,
• prioritizes simple words over complicated phrases, jargon, and idiomatic phrases, and
• uses the active voice.

To help you decide if your writing is understandable, we’ve put together a quick plain language quiz that looks at your writing habits to tell you whether you’re a plain language master or in need a little practice.

How understandable is your writing? Which bad habits should you work on?

6 Notable People Who Experienced Imposter Syndrome

An imposter is a fraud, someone who pretends to be something they aren’t. Often, their motive is to steal or take advantage of others. However, some people who feel like imposters aren’t guilty of any crime. They haven’t intentionally misled anyone.

According to psychologists Pauline Rose Clance and Suzanne Imes, imposter syndrome affects many high-achieving individuals. You’ll be surprised at how many successful people don’t feel they deserve the praise they receive.

Dr. Margaret Chan

Forbes ranked Dr. Chan as 2013’s thirtieth most powerful woman in the world. It’s easy to see why—Queen Elizabeth II named her an Officer of the Order of the British Empire, and she finished two terms as the head of the World Health Organization. You would think that her educational background and decades of medical experience would make her feel like an expert in her field. However, in Susan Pinker’s book, The Sexual Paradox: Men, Women and the Real Gender Gap, she admits: “There are an awful lot of people out there who think I’m an expert. How do these people believe all this about me? I’m so much aware of all the things I don’t know.”

John Steinbeck

He won a Pulitzer Prize for The Grapes of Wrath. He won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature. Decades after his death, his stories are still inspiring others. For example, the 2016 film In Dubious Battle, starring James Franco and Selena Gomez, was based on Steinbeck’s 1936 novel of the same name and tells the story of a pivotal labor strike in California. So, would you say that John Steinbeck is a great author? He wouldn’t have said the same of himself, according to his journal: “I am not a writer. I’ve been fooling myself and other people.” In fact, he admired his characters for being “so much stronger and purer and braver” than he was.

Jodie Foster

It’s not uncommon for people to compare themselves with others who they feel are more talented. When 60 Minutes’ Mike Wallace interviewed Jodie Foster after she won an Oscar for Best Actress, she said, “I thought it was a fluke. I thought everybody would find out, and they’d take it back. They’d come to my house, knocking on the door, ‘Excuse me, we meant to give that to someone else. That was going to Meryl Streep.’”

Meryl Streep

Of course, Meryl Streep would agree that she deserves an Academy Award, right? In one interview, she also describes her struggles with self-doubt: “I have varying degrees of confidence and self-loathing. . . . You can have a perfectly horrible day where you doubt your talent . . .” In a later article in The Guardian, she revealed that those feelings first took root in her childhood. “I didn’t have any confidence in my beauty when I was young. I felt like a character actress, and I still do.”

Cheryl Strayed

In the novel Torch, the main character, Teresa Rae Wood, encourages the listeners of her radio show to “be incredible.” In contrast, the creator of the character, Cheryl Strayed, finds it hard to acknowledge that she’s a remarkable author. In fact, she suggests that questioning your skills is a normal part of the writing process. “Writing is always full of self-doubt, but the first book [Torch] is really full of self-doubt, and it was much more of a struggle to keep the faith.” By the time her second book ranked first on the New York Times Bestseller list, “doubt and self-loathing” were so familiar to her that she thought, “Okay, this is how it feels to write a book.”

Emma Watson

How would you feel if magazines such as Elle and Vanity Fair featured beautiful pictures of you on their covers? Emma Watson, the actress who plays Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter films, feels like an imposter. To her, the lovely lady on the magazines seems like someone different from who she is in real life. Her struggles aren’t limited to the glossy pages of fan mags: “I’d walk down the red carpet and go into the bathroom,” she recalls. “I had on so much makeup and these big, fluffy, full-on dresses. I’d put my hands on the sink and look at myself in the mirror and say, ‘Who is this?’ I didn’t connect with the person who was looking back at me, and that was a very unsettling feeling.”

Imposter isn’t the word you might associate with famous, talented, and successful people, but many of these notable people suffer from feelings of inadequacy. Though these emotions may stem from childhood, psychologists Clance and Imes recommend communication. Their study concludes “If one [person] is willing to share . . . , [others are] relieved to find they are not alone.” How do you feel about your success?

8 Phrases That Can Make Your Business Writing Seem Outdated

The workplace is constantly evolving, with new generations coming in as the older ones retire. For the many professionals caught in between these two age groups, it’s important to adapt to new work styles. The millennial generation has complicated this even further. There have been reports that some millennials aren’t as quick to adapt to new work environments, but rather sometimes expect businesses to change to meet their needs. Some say that inspiring younger generations is the key to getting them motivated.

Millennials also bring a new energy to the business world. As professionals adjust, they’re quickly learning that it’s important to avoid standing out by using outdated verbiage in their emails and other written communications. Whether you’re trying to win over a client or communicating with a team member, here are a few terms to avoid if you want to seem current.

As Per Your Request

“As per your request” sounds formal and grammatically incorrect, even though it was used in business for many years. Its time has come and gone. Instead, switch it with “As you requested,” which says the same thing in a much more approachable and simple way.

Yours Truly

At one time, you wouldn’t think about ending a business letter without a valediction such as “yours truly,” “sincerely,” or “regards.” To this day, some traditionalists still end business communication this way, even when that communication takes place through email. Those people may not have noticed that most people don’t use a valediction at all. Among those who do, sign-offs such as “best regards” are preferable to the very outdated “yours truly.” Although “cheers” has become popular in recent years, some professionals feel that it may be too pretentious unless you’re British.

Enclosed

If you’re sending a packet to someone by postal mail and you’ve enclosed something, the words “enclosed please find” are appropriate. If you’re forwarding something as an attachment in an email, the word you’re looking for is “attached.” Instead of formally saying “attached please find,” go for the warmer and friendlier “I’ve attached.”

Call Me

This may be picky, but millennials generally aren’t as attached to voice calls as their older coworkers. Text messages passed phone calls as the preferred method of communication around 2007, which means that your younger team members are more likely to chat with you over Slack or some other platform than to use their smartphone to make an actual call. Instead, simply say “contact me” and let the other person decide which mode of communication they prefer.

Broken Record

Vinyl may be back in style, but many of the millennials in today’s workplace grew up on CDs and DVDs. If you tell them that something “sounds like a broken record,” they may be more likely to conjure up images of champion athletic record breakers than the type of record that skipped. To communicate that someone is repeating themselves ad nauseam, just say so and skip the cliché.

My Bad

This term was popularized in the 90s. It may seem to you as though the 90s were just a few years ago, but for twenty-somethings, the experience of hearing “my bad” is the equivalent of how you felt when you heard your parents say “groovy.”

As for me, I remember when “my bad” didn’t exist yet, and I really didn’t like how popular it became. Do yourself a favor. Simply say, “I’m sorry.” Not only will you avoid using an outdated phrase, it will also come across as more sincere, and perhaps even more intelligent.

Interwebs

There are several terms for the Internet that have dropped out of favor as tech has grown more sophisticated. Referring to the web as the interwebs or the worldwide web will date you. When giving an web address, you should also leave off the “www,” since that has dwindled away as well. If you recite “http” as part of a URL, you’ll go beyond appearing dated and instead sound like you have no idea what you’re talking about.

Nine-to-Five Job

For many years, the workweek has extended well beyond nine-to-five, with many workers showing up each day at eight a.m. For millennials, this phrase also creates anxiety, since many workers now prefer flexible work hours. Instead, refer to full-time workers as “salaried employees” if you need a label for them.

Written communication is essential for interacting with colleagues, especially now that so many workers tend to avoid speaking on the phone. By rethinking some of the words you use and replacing them with more productive alternatives, you’ll be better able to connect with your younger coworkers and clients.

A journalist and digital consultant, John Boitnott has worked at TV, print, radio, and Internet companies for 20 years. He’s an advisor at StartupGrind and has written for BusinessInsider, Fortune, NBC, Fast Company, Inc., Entrepreneur, and Venturebeat. You can find him on Twitter here.

Spoken Language Rules Work In Signed Communication, Too

Language is language, regardless of the way you communicate. A new study by Psychology and Linguistics Professor Iris Berent at Northeastern University demonstrates that similar structures rule communication, and whether communication is via speech or sign is of secondary importance.

Basically, people adhere to certain patterns for what’s permissible in language and reject structures that “seem wrong.” By observing that research subjects with no knowledge of sign language mapped the rules of spoken language onto signs they were shown, researchers learned that ingrained rules play a bigger role than previously thought.

Sign language was already known to have its own grammar and rules for pronunciation, word order, and usage before this study. Beyond that, American Sign Language (ASL) has a very different vocabulary and set of rules from sign languages used in other countries, and there are different regional accents and dialects within one country, just like in spoken language.

Berent said that her research aimed “to reveal the complex structure of sign language, and in so doing, disabuse the public of this notion [that sign language is not really a language].”

How do you research language without taking the time to make people learn a whole new language?

Berent’s lab approached the problem by focusing on words and signs that had the same basic structure. Then, they extended that structure to meaningless sounds and signs. The researchers showed signs with similar patterns to participants with no knowledge of sign language and asked the participants to rate whether certain patterns seemed to make sense.

The main pattern was doubling: words and signs with a sound or sign that was repeated. Here are some examples:

• bagogo
• fatiti
• bizanzan
• slaflaf

If these words seem like they might be right at home in Dr. Seuss, you’re not far off the mark. These combinations are nonsensical, and participants in the study recognized that. The exciting thing for the researchers is that their participants recognized and reacted to this type of pattern in both speech and signs.

The subjects were asked to respond to signs the same way they would to words, judging whether they made sense in certain contexts. If a word was given as a name for a single object, people gave lower ratings to words with doubling than ones without doubling. For example, slaflaf got worse ratings than slafmak. Sure, they both sound like gibberish, but one sounds more likely to be a word. One exception: if subjects were given a word or sign with doubling and told that the doubling signaled plurality, they were more likely to give it a higher rating.

In short: people’s responses to specific forms change based on the linguistic context of those forms.

By finding that people with no knowledge of sign language reacted in the same way to both words and signs with similar patterns, Berent showed that the governing rules for spoken language and sign language aren’t as different as people may think.

Berent’s study shows that sign languages aren’t just based on things like the shapes of objects described in individual words: instead, they rely on abstract rules just like spoken languages do. The idea that the same mechanisms in the brain are at work for both spoken and sign languages is big news for neurologists, psychologists, and linguists alike. In the task of uncovering the mysteries of language, we’re just scratching the surface.

3 Dating Tips You Can Steal From “Quiet”

Dating is tough for a lot of people. For introverts living in an extroversion-dominant society, the dating pool can be even more difficult to navigate. However, some of the powerful lessons from the landmark book Quiet:The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking can be helpful not only for coping with western culture generally but also for getting more value from dating.

What Is Quiet?

In Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, Susan Cain explains how western society has come to favor an ideal of one spectrum of personality: extroversion. This “extroverted ideal,” which Cain argues permeates our culture, emphasizes that a person’s highest form of self should be outgoing, risk-friendly, highly collaborative, action-oriented, and effervescently social, among other things. In contrast, Cain argues that introverts’ strengths and contributions have been overlooked or even denied because they embody traits like caution, reticence, contemplativeness, focus, and preference to work solo, which have historically been devalued by society.

How Can It Help You in Dating?

1 Understand Your Needs

The most important step in finding greater fulfillment as an introvert is to take time to truly understand your own needs. In environments that have been traditionally dominated by extroverted values (most education systems and business spaces), introverts often act as what Cain calls “psuedo-extroverts.” Basically, this means introverts learn to adopt extroverted tendencies to cope and succeed in life. Sometimes they are so successful that they convince others—or even themselves—that they are extroverts.

This doesn’t help you at all when it comes to finding a partner, however. In that arena it pays off more to be true to yourself. So, it’s important to take some time to remove your “psuedo-extrovert” mask and get in touch with your introverted heart. Understand how much social interaction you can handle, what kinds of activities leave you feeling recharged, and how often you need them.

2 Set Appropriate Expectations When Dating Other Temperaments

Once you know what you need and under which circumstances, you can begin to fit those pieces into the needs of prospective partners. This is sometimes easier said than done. If you, for example, find yourself attracted to someone with a different temperament, your particular need for isolation and quiet in the evenings can clash with their need for activity and stimulation. So, what do you do? Essentially, it comes down to communication. Letting prospective partners know up front and in real-time what you are comfortable with will help you get more satisfaction out of dating in general and will help you filter out partners that aren’t an ideal fit in the long run.

3 Practice Communicating Your Preferences

However, it can be difficult to tell someone you like that this trendy (read busy) bar that they are crazy about makes you want to crawl into a (quiet) hole for an entire Saturday. Rather than toughing it out but secretly feeling uncomfortable and therefore not representing your best self, try communicating what it is that is particularly difficult for you, e.g., “This place has a lot going on and it’s hard to talk.” This is when a bit of practice comes in handy.

Asserting introverted needs in an extroverted space is uncomfortable—at least at first—but by identifying what you need to be fulfilled, you can begin asking for or making these needs known in less high-stakes situations than your next date. That is, practice asking the waiter to turn off the television or turn down the music. Practice asking your friends to go someplace calmer. Practice telling your co-worker who jumps from task to task that you need some time to get organized and plan. Practice telling your family that they should go out without you and that you’ll be fine at home alone for the night. The more you voice your needs in everyday scenarios, the easier it will be for you to find the necessary words when you need to communicate with a date.

What experiences have you had with dating as in introvert? What communication tips would you add?