Plain Language on Pages About Money

Where the writing gets dense

On most small business sites, the clearest writing is on the home page and the densest on the pages about money: prices, deposits, payment terms, cancellations and refunds.

Those pages are often copied from a contract, or written the evening after a dispute, to prevent the next one.

Yet they are the pages a reader most needs to understand exactly, often on a phone, sometimes in a second language.

A dense money page does not prevent disputes. It produces phone calls from people who could not follow it, and arguments with people who signed up without trying.

Who struggles with dense pages

• People with learning disabilities or difficulty holding long sentences in mind.
• People reading in a second language, which in BC means a great many customers.
• Older readers unfamiliar with how online bookings and subscriptions work.
• Anyone on a phone, where a long paragraph becomes a wall.
• Anyone anxious about money, which narrows attention for everybody.

The last includes every reader. Worry makes careful reading harder, and pages about money are read with more worry than any other page on the site.

What the guidelines say

WCAG 2.0, the standard most accessibility rules refer to, addresses this at its highest level, AAA, which most rules do not require.

It asks for a simpler version or supporting material when text needs more than a lower secondary school reading level, and for unusual words and abbreviations to be explained.

At AA, the level most businesses aim for, headings must describe what follows. On a money page, a heading reading Cancelling a booking does more than one reading Policies.

The number first

Readers scan a money page for the figure. If they find it at once, they will read the conditions; if they have to dig, they assume something is being hidden.

So lead with it. "$140 per visit, including the first hour" is a better opening than a paragraph about value and quality that reaches the price in its fourth sentence.

The same goes for every section: the deposit amount, then when it is due; the cancellation charge, then when it applies.

One condition per sentence

Conditions chained with unless, except, provided that and in the event of are where readers get lost. Split them into separate sentences, or a short list with one condition per line.

A typical clause: a fee equal to fifty percent of the booking will be applied to cancellations made with less than forty-eight hours' notice.

The plain version uses a clock time and two sentences. Cancel by noon two days before your booking and you pay nothing. Cancel later and you pay half.

Use you and we rather than the customer and the company, and active verbs: we charge, not a fee will be applied. And retire legal leftovers such as herein and notwithstanding.

Examples do the explaining

One worked example on the page answers more questions than a paragraph of rules: book on Monday for Thursday, cancel on Wednesday morning, and you pay half.

Prefer clock times and days to durations. By noon the day before is clearer than twenty-four hours' notice, which leaves the reader counting.

Say whether days mean business days or calendar days. Say whether prices include tax, and which taxes apply. If you sell outside Canada, say the prices are in Canadian dollars.

A worked example

A self-storage facility with a few hundred units, in a suburb east of Vancouver, had a page called Rates and Policies.

It was one long paragraph from the rental agreement, covering rent, fees, the deposit, insurance, notice periods, late payment and the lien process, in the agreement's own language.

The front desk answered the same three questions by phone every day: what it would cost to start, how to move out, and what happened if rent was late.

The rewrite used those three questions as headings. Under the first went the amounts, plainly listed. Under the second, one sentence: tell us in writing at least two weeks before you leave.

Under the third went the late fee, the day it applies, and a promise to phone before anything further happens. The full agreement stayed on the site, linked beneath.

Before publishing, the owner asked a neighbour to answer the three questions from the page. She did it in under a minute.

When the contract has to stay formal

Some wording has to stay legal wording.

The page summarises the agreement in plain words and links to the full text. Have whoever drafted the agreement check that the two say the same thing.

Where the summary and the contract disagree, customers will quote the page, and they will have a point.

Testing with someone outside

Nobody inside a business can read its own money pages fresh. You know the answers, so the page seems clear.

Give it to somebody who does not work for you and ask three things: what it will cost them, when they pay, and what happens if they change their mind.

If they cannot answer from the page within a minute or two, rewrite it. Watch where they slow down, and stay silent: every explanation you give aloud is one the page failed to give.

Prices as text, tables as tables

Prices belong in the page as text. A price list saved as a picture reaches a screen reader only if somebody retypes it as alternative text, and Chrome's built-in translation cannot read it at all.

Price tables should be real tables with header rows, so a screen reader can announce which column a figure belongs to.

And keep bold for the numbers that matter. A page where everything is emphasised has no emphasis left.

The counter-case

Some money pages need precision that plain words cannot carry alone: financial products, regulated services and terms with legal weight. There, the plain version sits beside the required text rather than replacing it.

Pages written for purchasing departments may need the formal terms up front, since those readers are checking rather than deciding.

And a short list of five prices with no conditions needs little work. For most businesses, though, pages about money should put the number first, use short sentences, and pass an outsider's reading.

This week

1. Find every page that mentions price or payment.
2. Put the number first in each section.
3. Split long conditions into separate sentences.
4. Add one worked example to each policy.
5. Say whether tax is included.
6. Check the summary against the agreement.
7. Ask an outsider to answer three questions from it.

Step seven is the only one that tells you whether the other six worked. A page that seems clear to its writer proves nothing until somebody else has read it.

Another place where a page quietly shuts readers out is covered in CAPTCHAs that lock out blind visitors.

Frequently asked questions

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