“Employees must ensure that all reimbursable expenditure is substantiated by documentation evidencing the nature and business purpose of the expense prior to submission of the relevant claim form.”
If you write policy for a living, that sentence looks normal. If you are the person trying to get forty pounds back for a taxi, it is a wall. You have to decode “substantiated,” work out what counts as evidence, and guess whether the claim form comes before or after the receipts.
Policy language rarely gets dense because the authors are careless. It gets dense because it is written defensively, in layers, by people who expect to be audited. The editor’s job is not to make the text friendlier at the cost of precision. It is to keep every obligation, deadline and exception intact while removing the fog around them.
Start With the Reader, Not the Rule
Before you touch a sentence, answer three questions. Who has to act on this text? What decision are they trying to make? And what is the most expensive misunderstanding available to them?
Most policies have at least two audiences, and often three: the people who must comply, the people who apply or enforce the rule, and the people who audit it later. These groups need different things from the same document. Someone claiming expenses wants to know what to do and what to attach. A finance reviewer wants to know what to check and when to refuse. Try to make one paragraph serve both and you usually serve neither.
Writing for the doer is the fastest route to clarity. Lead with the action, then the condition, then the consequence. Clarity is not vagueness: a clear sentence can still be strict, and a strict rule can still be readable.
Find the Action Buried in the Sentence
Most density comes from nominalizations — verbs that have been turned into nouns and then propped up with filler. “Provide notification” becomes “tell us.” “Conduct an assessment” becomes “assess.” Once you start noticing them, they are everywhere.
A few swaps worth memorising:
- “make an application” → “apply”
- “in the event that” → “if”
- “prior to” → “before”
- “for the purpose of” → “to”
- “is required to” → “must”
- “shall be entitled to” → “may”
- “in the absence of” → “without”
- “with respect to” → “about”
Then look for the grammatical subject. Who does what? Rebuild the sentence around a person and a verb. “Failure to comply with the aforementioned procedure may result in the denial of reimbursement” becomes “If you do not follow these steps, we may not reimburse you.” Same rule, half the effort.
One caution: do not invent an actor. If the original deliberately avoids naming who decides, that may be a real gap in the policy rather than lazy writing. Send it back to the owner as a question instead of guessing.
Strip the Legal Armor Without Cutting the Meaning
Some of this vocabulary exists to limit legal risk rather than to communicate. Some of it genuinely needs to stay. The skill is telling the two apart.
Pick one modal and stay with it
Use “must” for obligation, “may” for permission, and “will” for things that happen automatically. “Shall” is often ambiguous and reads as archaic; replace it wherever you can do so without changing intent.
Decide what “and/or” means
It usually means both are allowed. Say “A or B, or both,” or simply “A or B” if the inclusive reading is obvious from context. Never leave the reader to work it out.
Trim the doublets and hedges
“Null and void” is “void.” “Each and every” is “each.” “Provided that,” “subject to” and “notwithstanding” can often become “but,” “except” and “even if.” Keep “including but not limited to” only where the list really is open-ended; otherwise name the items and stop.
If you are not the policy owner, do not quietly widen or narrow an obligation. Mark the change, explain why the plain version means the same thing, and let the owner and any legal reviewer confirm it. Clarity edits should be defensible line by line.
Put Conditions Up Front and Exceptions in a List
The most readable policy sentence follows a simple shape: If this happens, that person must do this, by then. Exceptions come afterwards, in their own place.
When a paragraph stacks three conditions and a cross-reference, split it. Put the main rule in one short paragraph. Move the exceptions into a bulleted list under a small heading such as “When this does not apply.” Put thresholds, dates and amounts in a table if there are more than two of them. Keep sentences around twenty-five words where you can, and give each one idea room to breathe.
An Accuracy Checklist for the Final Pass
Plain language that changes the rule is worse than jargon that keeps it. Run this list against the source text before you hand anything back:
- Scope words. Check “all,” “each,” “any,” “normally” and “generally.” Softening one of these can quietly drop an obligation.
- Modals. Confirm every must, may and will matches what the original intended.
- Defined terms. Use each one consistently, define it once, and do not paraphrase it later.
- Numbers and dates. Amounts, notice periods and deadlines must survive untouched and unambiguous.
- Exceptions and approvals. Make sure each one is still attached to the rule it modifies.
- Cross-references. Renumber section references after any restructuring.
- Records. Keep what must be kept, by whom, and for how long — these details vanish easily in rewriting.
A Worked Example
Before: “Reimbursement of expenses incurred in connection with business travel shall be effected within thirty (30) days of receipt by the Finance Department of a completed claim form, provided that such expenses are substantiated by original receipts and are not of a type excluded pursuant to Appendix B.”
After: “We pay travel expenses within 30 days of receiving your completed claim form. Include original receipts. Expenses listed in Appendix B are not covered.”
Three sentences instead of one, and the reader now knows what to send, to whom, and how long it takes. The thirty days are unchanged. Appendix B is still the exception. Nothing was added and nothing disappeared.
Test It on Someone Who Does Not Write Policy
Hand the draft to three people who actually use it and ask them to answer questions: Can you claim a taxi home after a late shift? What do you need to attach? What happens if a receipt is missing? If they hesitate or ask you to explain, the text is not finished.
Reading it aloud catches more than you expect. Sentences you can say in one breath are usually the ones that will work on a screen at nine in the morning, when someone is in a hurry and mildly annoyed.
The Editing Pass, Start to Finish
Work in order and the job stays manageable. Identify the readers and what they must do. Unbury the verbs. Settle the modals and cut the armor that carries no risk. Move conditions to the front and exceptions into a list. Then run the accuracy checklist against the original, line by line, and let someone read it cold.
A good policy sentence is forgettable in the best way: the reader does what it says without noticing the sentence at all. That is the whole target. If the text needs a glossary to be understood, the glossary is not the fix — the sentences are. And where a rewrite touches rights, money or legal duties, have the owner and a qualified reviewer sign it off before it goes anywhere near publication.
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