Abstract Three versions of a financial form were compared to each other with regard to usability, understanding and respondents’ experiences. The first version did not explicitly use any plain language techniques; the second version of the form explicitly used some plain language techniques and in the third version even more plain language techniques were employed. Mixed methodologies were used to analyse the three versions. The results of the study show that the first version of the form is the least usable, understandable and is associated with the worst experience, while the second version is more usable, understandable and respondents had a better experience with it. Despite this, the second version still has many issues which are solved in the third version. The study concluded that successfully implementing plain language techniques is an iterative process of testing and refining. The study also concluded that the third version of the form had only marginally better results than the second version, suggesting that the success of implementing plain language techniques might be influenced by other factors – that certain themes or fields are difficult by their very nature and that the employment of plain language techniques do not always have the desired effect.

中文翻译：

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朴素的语言：会足够朴素吗？

摘要在可用性，理解力和受访者的体验方面，对三种财务形式进行了比较。第一个版本没有明确使用任何简单的语言技术；表格的第二版明确使用了一些简单的语言技术，而在第三版中，甚至使用了更多的简单语言技术。混合方法用于分析这三个版本。研究结果表明，表格的第一个版本使用最少，易于理解，并且体验最差，而第二个版本则更易于使用，易于理解，并且受访者对表格的使用体验更好。尽管如此，第二版仍然存在许多在第三版中解决的问题。该研究得出的结论是，成功实施简单的语言技术是测试和改进的迭代过程。该研究还得出结论，该表格的第三版仅比第二版略有改善，这表明实施简单语言技术的成功可能会受到其他因素的影响–某些主题或领域因其本身的性质而困难，并且使用简单语言技术并不总是具有理想的效果。