Serving Smart Bites: 11 Tips for Making Complex Ideas Easier to Digest
Explaining complex ideas to non-experts is like trying to get someone to eat their vegetables. You know they’re good for them, and they might even agree, but unless you find a way to make the vegetables appealing, they’re likely to end up untouched on the side of the plate. And, unlike sprouts, you can’t just add a drizzle of honey to make it more palatable.
Fortunately, the same strategies that help parents get kids to eat their greens can help you make your information easier to digest. By applying a little creativity and thoughtfulness, you can turn those challenging “information vegetables” into something your audience willingly consumes and even enjoys. Here are 11 tips to help.
1. Hook your audience with the first bite
A big forkful of “Yum!” can certainly encourage diners to keep going – no wonder honey on top is so popular.
And with complex information, the truth is that a lot of people simply aren’t going to read the whole thing no matter what you do, so you should at least give them the most important details right away; as newspaper editors say, “Don’t bury the lead.” When you’re fighting attention spans, it’s better that they know at least the key details. And if they see something that really catches their attention (risk of looking bad, risk of losing all their money, risk of being eaten by animals), they’re more likely to want to read the rest.
2. The power of visual appeal
Fresh, bright, colourful vegetables are always going to be more popular than the same over-boiled ones, and they’ll probably be more nutritious too.
Similarly, with text, if it’s visually engaging, people will be more likely to read it and get more out of it. This doesn’t mean “add emojis”, but “use visual landmarks”: headings, bullet points, bolding of key terms – whatever will make key information stand out, make it easier to navigate, and make it look less like a desperately dull grey wall of text.
3. No hash: Stay on topic
Corned beef hash may be popular with some, but vegetable hash is usually a nonstarter. Keep the flavours focused.
In text, this means keeping to one topic per paragraph. Don’t give readers too many things to follow in the same eyeful. This may sound like something your high school teacher told you to do, and it probably is. It’s a lot harder for overworked, time-poor audiences to evaluate your text if it jumps all over the place.
4. Simplify the serve with easy-to-consume sentences
Have you ever tried to eat a salad that has really long pieces of stringy lettuce in it? Too long to chew and difficult to twirl or cut with the fork?
So awkward. Don’t make consuming unnecessarily challenging. And, with the most valuable information, keep the sentences simple. One idea per sentence, not too many words, and keep the subject and verb within sight of each other. Yes, your readers are usually adults who can read long sentences with suspended clauses, semicolons, and so on, but when the information you’re conveying is already complex, don’t make it even more work. It doesn’t have to be a string of five-word sentences, but if you’re saying more than one thing, use more than one sentence.
5. Try a structured Cobb salad
You know Cobb salads, right? If you’ve never seen one, they usually have all the ingredients in neat rows (note: if you go to a restaurant that serves a “Cobb salad” with all the ingredients mixed together, they’re lying to you).
A Cobb salad
Not only is it visually appealing, but it also makes it easy to see what’s what and to take it in as you want. The parallel for this in information articles is, well, parallels – put parallel ideas in parallel sentence structures. In other words, don’t say “half of respondents chose option A, and option B was chosen by another third”; say “half of respondents chose option A, and another third chose option B.” Don’t say “prices of broccoli were 15% higher in 2024 than in 2020, while cauliflower was 20% less in 2020 than in 2024”; say “broccoli prices rose by 15% from 2020 to 2024, and cauliflower prices rose by 25% in the same time” (yes, the calculation is correct). Also, call the same things the same thing – not “pumpkins” once, then “gourds,” then “large tawny winter squash,” etc.
Forget what anyone told you about “elegant variation.” You’re not trying to win a prize for poetry, because when you’re dealing with factual information, unlike poetry, there’s no room for interpretation.
6. Don’t overload it with filler
Don’t you just hate it when you pay good money for a salad that’s just a lot of cheap, dry lettuce, or is more than half bell peppers because they’re pretty and cheap? You want some substance, right?
Likewise with text. Don’t pile on “It must be noted that” or “Of key importance in the context of this subject is the insight that” or any other low-nutrition phrasing. Your readers want the information. Even if they’re not paying money for it, it’s costing their time. Don’t waste their time or you’ll lose them.
7. The flavourful basics: being direct
If people are going to eat and enjoy their vegetables, it’s going to be because they’re immediately rewarding. This isn’t Bordeaux; nobody swirls and sniffs a string bean.
In text, this means being direct. Which means, above all, use the active voice whenever you can. Yes, this may mean that you have to say, “I studied this” instead of “This was studied,” and that may seem less authoritative and scientific, but you’re not publishing in a journal. It’s easier for people to hold things in their mind when someone is doing a thing, rather than it abstractly being done by an unspecified entity.
8. Keep it easy to chew
This doesn’t even need explanation in the world of food.
In the world of information, it means don’t make dense constructions such as noun stacks – ahem, stacks of nouns. Don’t talk about the “five-day product-activation estimate”; talk about the “estimate of how many products are activated within five days.” Is it longer? Yes, but it’s easier to process. Shorter isn’t always better. Oh, and while we’re here, don’t insistently delete “that” everywhere (e.g., “the concept planners prefer” rather than “the concept that planners prefer”). This is not a newspaper where an extra quarter column inch could blow your layout. Clearer is more effective.
Again, these are key facts that require mental effort to understand; don’t needlessly divert mental effort for overly dense sentence structures.
9. No mystery items
“Just eat it! You’ll like it! It’s good for you, I promise!” Yes, that approach doesn’t really get that far, does it?
Mystery food items are generally a no-no if you want your kids (and your spouse) to eat them. In text, this means no undefined jargon. Generally speaking, you should use as little jargon as possible, but if you must use a technical term – because, for instance, your audience is going to need to know it – then define it right away, using straightforward terms that the reader can relate to their own life and needs. This includes acronyms – and don’t create a bunch of acronyms just because it looks flashy and important and saves you typing. We’ve warned you about this before.
10. Don’t serve a kids’ meal to adults
It may seem as though it’s all about making everything as simple, easy, and sweet as possible, you do need to remember who’s consuming it.
Don’t give someone something that’s obviously oriented to the wrong audience – for instance, don’t cut vegetable slices into dinosaur and bunny shapes if you’re serving them to a fourteen-year-old (unless you know the fourteen-year-old likes them). And with text, it can be a fine line to walk, but don’t talk down. Explain things that have any risk of being unfamiliar, but don’t explain things that every adult can be expected to know. And, notwithstanding what we’ve said above, if you’re writing for an educated audience, do toss in the occasional more complex sentence – preferably not one that’s conveying complex and unfamiliar information, though. Adults want to feel like they’re being talked to as adults. Test your text on a sample of your expected readership if you can.
11. The KitchenAid of text tools
No one can be expected to know and figure out everything themselves.
A bit of help is always welcome, but sometimes you can’t just call another person. If you’ve been through all your cookbooks, sooner or later you’re going to search online for “how to make sprouts taste better?” Likewise with information text, you aren’t always going to have the necessary distance of perspective to catch all the important things. This is especially true if you’re an expert in the field you’re talking about and you’re used to reading and writing text oriented to experts.
So, you need a fresh pair of eyes, but you can’t always call another human – and you don’t have to. This is one of the great uses of an AI-based software add-in such as Draftsmith.
Running Draftsmith on passages in your document gives you a whole host of ways to improve your text for the reader. You can use the “Plain English” or “Simplify” version suggesters or specify a reading level that’s best for your intended audience, and it will paraphrase your sentence for you. You won’t necessarily want to use the exact wording it gives you (though you may), but it can give you more ideas of ways to make your text even more accessible.
It can also help you see if what you’re saying is open to misinterpretation if the paraphrase it offers is not true to what you intended. After all, if you’re leaving something important unstated, Draftsmith won’t know what your readers don’t know.
Draftsmith is an intelligent plug-in for Microsoft Word that can help you get new perspectives on wording and style. See how you can serve up smart bites following our top tips and Draftsmith.
Get your free trial.