We’re excited to scoop the big award at the Plain Language Awards!
The Awards, run by the WriteMark Plain Language Awards Trust, recognise plain language champions in Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia. These are the people and organisations tackling passive verbs, trimming sentences and banishing ‘zombie nouns’* and corporate-speak.
‘We’re thrilled to win this award,’ says thinkstep-anz CEO Barbara Nebel. ‘We’ve built our plain language knowledge, skills and tools across our business over the past three years because we want our technical sustainability work with our clients to have an impact. This award shows that plain language is now part of our culture – how we do things at thinkstep-anz.’
Greta Menzies, Caroline Noordijk and Barbara Nebel at the Plain Language Awards
What is plain language?
This is how we define it at thinkstep-anz: Simple, concise, personal language that makes our technical findings easy for our clients to read, understand and act on.
Why does this matter?
For several reasons. Firstly, decision-makers like CEOs and Directors are busy and they’re rarely technical experts. Translating our technical team’s findings into plain language and infographics makes it easier for them to understand our findings and act on them.
Secondly, many organisations are (rightly) wary of ‘greenwash’ – making vague or incorrect environmental claims they cannot back up. Clients can rely on the documents we produce to share their sustainability information. They don’t need to change them and risk fines or damaging their brand.
Thirdly, many sustainability concepts are complex. No one talks about ‘eutrophication’ around the dinner table. We want as many people as possible to understand these concepts so we can work together to make our environment, communities and businesses more sustainable.
Our plain language promise to our clients
- A plain language executive summary on all our technical reports
- A client service offering plain language sustainability communications, including sustainability reports, climate disclosures, Board presentations, short-form reports (our Nutshells), case studies and web content
- Plain language resources like our Need to Know guides that explain complex sustainability concepts simply
- Attractive infographics in all our documents that support our plain language writing by highlighting what matters.
Thanks and congratulations
The thinkstep-anz team thanks the WriteMark Plain Language Awards Trust for running the awards and promoting awareness and best practice. Congratulations to the other winners and finalists. All power to your editing pens!
*Zombie nouns (nominalisations) are those clunky nouns like ‘transportation’ and ‘applicability’ that suck the life out of your sentences. We love this article by University of Auckland academic Helen Sword.
27 October 2023