You know that eating a clean diet of minimally processed veggies, fruits, grains and lean meats increases your chances for a long and healthy life, just as you know a regimen of fatty, unhealthy foods can clog your arteries and leave you feeling sluggish and uninspired. Did you know you can apply a similar notion to training?

You can boost the health of your training by using clean writing. Certainly, writing isn’t a life-or-death situation. However, adding unnecessary words or phrases or using run-on sentences will clog your learners’ flow of consciousness as surely as a plate of nachos will clog their arteries. At the very least, this clog can make the learning experience less enjoyable; at worst, it can result in an ineffectual and frustrating experience for the learner. Outwardly, your training may look fit, with engaging interactions, beautiful graphics or high-end audio, but if the writing isn’t clean, the training will live a short life.

Here are some ways writing can clog up your training, along with tips to help you write more cleanly:

Use active sentences.

In an active sentence, the subject is performing the action (the verb). Typically, active voice is more direct and uses fewer words. It often results in more white space, making it easier to focus on what’s important. It’s a good place to start when cleaning up your writing diet. Here are two examples:

Example 1:

• Passive: Following a few rules is required when you write cleanly.
• Active: Follow a few rules to write cleanly.

Example 2:

• Passive: Radiation exposure is limited in hospitals by guidelines.
• Active: Hospital guidelines limit radiation exposure.

In each example, you can see that the active sentence is more concise, resulting in a shorter sentence that is easier to understand.

Keep it super simple (K.I.S.S.).

Get the message across using the shortest word or phrase that means the same thing. You are creating training; the goal is not to impress someone with flowery prose but to simply and effectively make the desired learning stick.

Subject matter experts (SMEs) can cause a few clogs of their own by tossing in a lot of business jargon. It is your job to translate that jargon into meaningful, clean language. The client is the content expert, but you are the expert in how to relay that information in an engaging and clear manner. Words shouldn’t be trendy (they become outdated quickly) or make the learner reach for the dictionary (someone who feels inferior won’t learn as well). Words should convey information simply.

Here are some examples:

• Instead of “leverage” … “use”
• Instead of “utilization,” “utilize” or “usage” … “use”
• Instead of “not many” … “few”
• Instead of “in the event that” … if

Avoid Additives and Fillers

Avoid using fillers, meaningless words or redundancies that provide no additional context to the message and create unhealthy writing.

In training, the word “please” is often used: “Please turn to page 6 to continue” or “Please click the button.” Training is about getting to the point: You don’t need to beg someone to participate or feel bad about ignoring social niceties. Just tell the learner what to do and avoid the white space filler.

Avoid using words that have no contextual meaning, such as “actually,” “really” or “various.” For example, instead of “There are various pictures that actually show the tower from a really high perspective,” write “There are pictures that show the tower from a high perspective.”

Always consider whether an additional word or phrase is redundant. Was the message already relayed? If it was, highlight it and press “delete.” Avoid phrases such as “at this period in time” or “in my opinion” (remember, you wrote it). And don’t use multiple words with identical or similar meanings to describe someone or something.

Here are some examples:

• Instead of “Please don’t use filler words at this period in time,” write “Don’t use filler words.”
• Instead of “Jane is clever, smart and shrewd,” write “Jane is clever.”
• Instead of “Three or four words or so will do,” write “A few words will do.”

Keep a style guide nearby as you write, and refer to it whenever you’re in doubt. Excellent time-tested resources include “Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace” by Joseph M. Williams and “The Elements of Style” by William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White. These books are foundational to understanding how to avoid clogs and write cleanly. “Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace” offers exercises you can use with your training team to enhance their writing skills.

Everyone reaps the benefits of healthy writing for robust training. Just as you feel better when you eat more cleanly, your learners will leave feeling more energized when you write more cleanly.