This chapter shows that a minimal language approach (Goddard ed. 2018, 2021) can provide new evidence and new guidelines for improving the wording of questionnaires, surveys and rating scales. A review of the literature reveals the lack of a satisfactory research-based methodology for ensuring optimally clear and cross-translatable language in question formulation. The chapter then presents worked examples from four areas of psychometric assessment: mental health (with reference to the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales or DASS), climate change distress (with reference to a section of a National Climate Action Survey), personality assessment (with reference to Big Five personality testing) and mother/infant emotional connection (with reference to the Welch Emotional Connection Screen or WECS). Some of these worked examples report on collaborations or co-design with the originators of the instruments in question. In all cases, the authors demonstrate how problematical wordings and phrasings can be rendered into clearer, more explicit and more readily cross-translatable language. Difficulties and drawbacks of a minimal language approach are considered, as well as its many advantages. It is recognised that the selective use of language-specific expressions is necessary and justifiable in certain circumstances.