Plain language ISO 24495
What is plain language?
According to the definition of plain language in the plain language standard:
Plain language is communication in which wording, structure and design are so clear that intended readers can easily find what they need, understand what they find, and use that information.
– ISO 24495-1:2023, clause 3.1
Plain language governing principles
The standard gives four governing principles:
- Principle 1: Readers get what they need (relevant).
- Principle 2: Readers can easily find what they need (findable).
- Principle 3: Readers can easily understand what they find (understandable).
- Principle 4: Readers can easily use the information (usable).
Why plain language is key to financial and legal businesses
- Compliance with Consumer Duty and other financial regulations: Recent FCA guidance makes clear the importance of plain language as a customer outcome. Firms who communicate clearly are likely to meet the Duty’s ‘consumer understanding’ outcome.
- Trust earned: Even highly qualified specialists prefer concise, transparent wording over jargon. Clarity boosts confidence in complex decisions. (nngroup.com)
- International consistency: National standards bodies worldwide have adopted the plain-language standard. It’s used in 14 languages and 21 countries. For example, South Africa published it as SANS 24495-1 in February 2024.
- Scalable with AI: The standard allows us to scale our efforts responsibly, in a structured way. Narratology has workflows and methods that apply to each principle of the governing standard.
How we help you reach the standard
Plain language is a strategic choice. It’s not an editing checklist. These are some of the ways we can help you to meet the standard.
Training in plain language, ISO 24495
Our ISO 24495 courses are unique in that they deal with plain language, accessibility and inclusive design. All these approaches are related so it’s important to learn about them together.
We also give our clients a workflow to meet all the standard’s principles.
Editorial tools and workflow advice
We provide guidance on style sheets, glossaries and other editorial tools to make plain language easier for your organisation. We also help teams set up the right processes for reviews and understand what content you can re-use across documents.
Rewriting and editing
We work with all stakeholders, from marketing to legal and compliance. This multi-disciplinary approach helps to make sure your communications are responsible, ethical and will meet business and legal needs. We are linguists at heart, and really understand how to structure sentences and paragraphs for understanding.
User testing and research
Finally, we know how to evaluate plain language. We use a combination of heuristic guides, AI-aided assessment tools, and research. Our research is both quantitative and qualitative. We don’t believe that research stops at user tests.
You can use AI to help your plain-language efforts. While some aspects must be done by a person and by live research, you can use AI to scale. AI can be useful to:
- Refine content personas
- Use personas to identify content gaps
- Create user testing materials, and analyse results of user testing
- Discover familiar replacements for complex words and jargon
- Perform basic plain-language audits of criteria such as sentence length and active voice (AI cannot audit all elements of the ISO standard)
- Check consistency of content in multiple formats
- Customise plain-language training materials for your organisation
The plain language ISO standard is ISO 24495-1:2023, Plain language — Part 1: Governing principles and guidelines.
It defines plain language as communication in which wording, structure, and design are clear so intended readers can easily find, understand, and use the information.
It sets four governing principles:
Readers get what they need (relevant).
Readers can find what they need (findable).
Readers can understand what they find (understandable).
Readers can use the information (usable).
The plain language standard for legal information is ISO 24495-2:2025, Plain language — Part 2: Legal communication. It gives detailed guidelines for drafting laws, contracts, court forms, and other legal documents so that different audiences can easily find, understand, and use their rights and obligations.
Plain-language training is available in person and remotely, throughout the UK.
Narratology offers courses aligned to the ISO standards as well as to commercial best practices and regulations such as Consumer Duty.
Yes - make sure that the tool uses plain language and not only readability scoring. Try our plain-language assessment tool at app.narratology.co.uk for free. This will give you an idea of what you can and cannot use AI for.