About Everyday Words | The CDC Clear Communication Index | Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

This tool lists terms frequently used in public health materials and their common, everyday alternatives. This tool shows original sentences with jargon that come from materials on CDC.gov and suggested clear plain language rewrites. Some rewrites do not use the everyday alternative.

Public health terms without plain language alternatives are not included in Everyday Words for Public Health Communication. We recommend defining these terms the first time you use them so that all readers and listeners will know what they mean.

Words and phrases may have multiple meanings, so check the context of use before you rewrite your sentence. Remember, it might not be enough to delete jargon in materials for the public. You may have to rewrite sentences using multiple clear communication and plain language techniques. Sometimes the better sentence may be longer to include a good clear communication substitute. As a rule, you help readers when you do the following:

Write short sentences.
Use active voice.
Use everyday words and pronouns (when appropriate).

Federal employees and contractors writing for the nonexpert public
- The Plain Writing Act says that federal agencies must use plain language in public communication.
Anyone writing for an audience that will benefit from jargon-free language
- Consider the intended audience, and use the language that will make the most sense to them.

A broad, public audience may not have specialized knowledge about a topic. Using everyday words will help more people understand your information. Even specific audiences may not have the familiarity with the topic or the public health language we use frequently.

This tool includes many but not all common public health terms used in materials on CDC.gov. For example, the tool doesn’t include most specialized diseases or health conditions, or anatomy and physiology terms. We will periodically add relevant terms and examples.

If you do audience testing of these terms or other public health or medical words, please send your results to clearcommunication@cdc.gov. We may use your results to update the list.

If you’d like us to add a term to Everyday Words for Public Health Communication, please email the following to clearcommunication@cdc.gov:

The hard-to-understand term
Suggestions for a plain language term or terms to replace the hard-to-understand term
The original sentence in which the hard-to-understand term appeared
The revised sentence using the suggested plain language term