When I started my internship, I assumed sounding “professional” meant sounding polished — bigger words, more formal phrasing, the kind of language you’d expect to see in a press release.
What I’ve actually learned is the opposite: the best communications professionals I work with are devoted to clarity, not complexity. And once you start paying attention, you notice jargon everywhere — and you notice how much it gets in the way.
Here’s what I’ve picked up so far about writing for everyone, not just the people already fluent in your industry’s shorthand.
It’s easy to default to insider language, especially when you’re surrounded by people who use it fluently every day. But the moment you share that language with someone outside the organization — a guest at an event, a community member reading a flyer, a reporter on a deadline — it stops being efficient and creates a barrier.
Plain language isn’t about lowering the bar. It’s about removing unnecessary obstacles between your message and the person receiving it.
This was the biggest shift in how I think about writing. Plain language doesn’t mean “dumbed down” — it means you’ve done the work so the reader doesn’t have to. You’ve translated, simplified, and double-checked that your message lands the way you intended, regardless of someone’s background or familiarity with the subject.
When I’m writing anything — an email, a social caption, even a sign for an info desk — I’ve started asking myself one question before I hit send: would this make sense to someone who has zero context? If the answer is no, it needs another pass.
In PR, especially when you’re working with organizations that serve the public, clarity isn’t a nice-to-have — it’s the whole job. If someone can’t understand your message, it doesn’t matter how accurate or well-intentioned it is. It simply doesn’t work.
I’m still early in learning this craft, but the lesson has stuck with me: good writing isn’t about proving what you know. It’s about making sure the person on the other end never has to work to understand you.
Spread the word…
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