“Don’t commit crime.” That’s the startlingly insightful advice from Hertfordshire Police, put up on signs on their patch. It seems unlikely that it convinces anyone on the brink of the heist of the century to recant there and then, run back home, put their feet up and start knitting. It’s not as if the readers have just forgotten their morals and left them at home. A quick reminder is not going to change their behaviour. It’s just a bit daft.
But that doesn’t explain why the Plain English Campaign have taken them to task for it. They do great work challenging the nebulous corporate jargon of businesses and bureaucracies across the land. But this is an odd target for them. It’s not nebulous. It’s not corporate speak. It’s not jargon. It absolutely lives up to the principles of Plain English. It is as plain as plain can be.

Which, of course, is exactly its problem. As the reader, it doesn’t engage me, or surprise me, or provoke me; in fact, it doesn’t make me feel anything at all. Plain English doesn’t.

Yes, there are certain things where I want to get the message as quickly and easily as possible – the sign that directs me to the fire escape, say (especially if the flames are starting to lick at my ankles as I’m reading the sign). Or the terms and conditions of my pension. Or the letter that makes me redundant. All good uses of simple, direct, unadorned language.

But the job of writing is rarely just to make its point. The best language also makes us feel something about the author, or the organisation behind it. And the writer usually has an ulterior motive: to get us to do something, or buy something, or even just to like the author more.
Writing that’s more engaging than the Plain Jane English we’re used to seeing can turn up in the most mundane of places. Take the sign I saw in New York’s Central Park, where any British local council would have put up a sign saying ‘No ball games’, or ‘Keep off the grass’. Instead, in the Big Apple, you get the sign pictured above.

Nearly every time I show this to someone, it gets an ‘aaah’. By focussing on what you can do, and not just what you can’t (and why), and by managing to make an emotional connection – even in the fleeting moment as you jog through the park – it makes your reader so much more likely to co-operate. Yet how much longer did it take to write than the expected version? Three seconds? Four?

We have loads of opportunities like this at work to make more of an impact on our readers. Think e-mails, posters, letters to customers, even those pension terms and conditions, if we’re feeling brave. Which is why we should reject the unimaginative, uninspiring plain English of ‘Don’t commit crime’, and strive for something more arresting. How about:

How would you feel if you were burgled?
Or:
KARMA
What goes around comes around
Think about it. It might just do the trick.

Neil Taylor is creative director of The Writer, a consultancy that finds writers, manages writing, helps brands define their tone of voice and trains people to become better writers.