Clear Language Club (formerly Plain English Club) is a blog and newsletter for people who love to ditch the jargon and write clear, accessible content.

After more than 20 years or working with content, I feel pretty sure that clear language makes all products and services better. And that writing clearly makes life easier for everyone.

If you think so too, you are in the right place. You are joining lots of regular readers and 1000 people who subscribe to the newsletter. Hello and welcome!

About the blog

The blog is what you see on the home page. It features two main types of post. Original articles are exactly as you might imagine – new posts written just for this site.

Link posts are slightly different. The post title is an external link to an article, tool or recommended resource on a different website. I will usually add a quote and commentary to give my view or add some context. Most posts are link posts.

Every post is tagged, so you can use the tags page to find posts on topics you are interested in. Popular tags include content design, writing and accessibility.

I aim to post to the blog at least once most weekdays. You can bookmark the site or keep popping back to see what’s new. But the best way to get and read new posts is by using an RSS reader to subscribe to the RSS feed.

I subscribe to blogs using NetNewsWire on a Mac, which is free and open source. But Feedly is free and great too.

About the newsletter

The Clear Language newsletter is where it all started. There are now more than 1000 people who subcribe and the open rate is around 60%, which is pretty good.

Every two weeks, I send you an email that includes clear language advice, tools, and resources. You get the best links from the blog, alongside a few extras.

If you don’t have time to regularly check the blog, subscribe to the newsletter and let the good stuff come to you. You will also be the first to hear about new things in the works.

Learn more about the Clear Language Club newsletter or sign up using this handy form.

Explore the bookmarks

I add everything I share on the blog and newsletter to Clear Language Club Bookmarks. Resources are tagged in there too, so you can easily find what you are looking for.

Bookmarks also has built-in search for when you need to find something more specific. For example, rather than scroll through the ‘accessibility’ tag, you can enter a search term like ‘screen readers’ to find relevant resources quicker.

This is all completely free. Just head to the Clear Language Club Bookmarks page and start exploring to see how it works.

Who goes there?

Clear Language Club is an independent project published entirely by me, Iain Broome. Hello there! Welcome.

I’m an experienced content designer and in 2017, I set up my solo freelance studio, Very Meta. Before that, I worked at a two excellent design agencies on all sorts of projects for all sorts of fancy clients.

Most importantly, clear language has been part of my working life for more than 20 years. I've written and designed an enormous amount of content for public and private sector organisations. And I really think that writing clearly is a skill that almost anyone can learn.

Read about my freelance work or visit my personal website, which is more about my other life as a published author. Please do email iain@verymeta.com, follow me on Bluesky or connect on LinkedIn.

Site updates

If you want to get the latest changes to Clear Language Club or simply go back in time, you can check out the changelog.