“Corporations find that small improvements in clarity prevent vast amounts of waste.”

Steven Pinker, The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century

81 percent of business people agree “poorly written material wastes a lot of their time.”

“Bad Writing Is Destroying Your Productivity,” Harvard Business Review

In 2016 ex-Forrester analyst Josh Bernoff found U.S. businesses lose $396 billion yearly on bad writing. That’s why blue-chip businesses invest $3.1 billion yearly on writing training, to help fight that vast waste. As Inc. noted, “companies can't afford writing errors that might cost them business in the long run.”

Thought leaders get ROI from clear writing:

• When FedEx simplified its English, employees spent 80 percent less time reading company materials. Project officials estimated the yearly savings at $400,000.

• Apple’s fanatical insistence on plain English, MacObserver wrote in 2015, allows the iPhone to “resonate with real people… in a stunningly accessible way.”

• When Key Bank implemented a clear English policy employee satisfaction shot up 61 percent and productivity 37 percent. Calls to the help desk fell 17 percent and mistakes were slashed 77 percent.

• Aetna’s Vicki Lankarge said their 2016 plain English policy’s goal is to create a customer experience “that mirrors the experiences people have with other top brands from Amazon to Zappos.”

A survey of 1,214 American homeowners and investors conducted by Siegel+Gale between December 29, 2008 and January 5, 2009, released today, shows an overwhelming majority demand more clarity in communications from companies and the government. Fully 84% of all consumers say they are more likely to trust a company that uses jargon-free, plain English in communications.

• The Canadian government reports that when they rewrote their Certificate to Register Livestock, the compliance rate soared from a miserable 40% (imagine how much time THAT wasted) to 95%. That’s huge!