Plain language
Encyclopedia
Plain language is clear, succinct writing designed to ensure the reader understands as quickly and completely as possible.
Plain language strives to be easy to read, understand, and use. It avoids verbose, convoluted language and jargon. In many countries, laws mandate that public agencies use plain language to increase access to programs and services.
and communications scholars agree that plain language means:
, the phrase "I am disinclined to acquiesce to your request" simply means "No." The pretentious dialogue Elizabeth Swann
attempts to use as a gate-keeping device against Jack Sparrow illustrates how jargon and pretentious language can be used as a barrier between classes.
The following table contains examples of before-and-after plain language text from existing public documents.
argued, “When you wish to instruct, be brief; that men's minds take in quickly what you say, learn its lesson, and retain it faithfully. Every word that is unnecessary only pours over the side of a brimming mind.” Cicero writes that the plain style is not easy. While it may seem close to everyday speech, achieving the effect in formal discourse is a high and difficult art: "Plainness of style seems easy to imitate at first thought, but when attempted, nothing is more difficult."
Plainness does not mean the absence of all ornaments, only the more obvious ones. Cicero recognizes what Aristotle
had already pointed out, that a well-turned metaphor
or simile
can help us see a relation we had not recognized. In fact, he makes use of metaphor and simile to teach us what the plain style is all about:
Sherman wrote:
The 1930s saw many studies on how to make texts more readable. In 1931, Douglas Tyler and Ralph Waples published the results of their two-year study, "What People Want to Read About." In 1934, Ralph Ojemann, Edgar Dale
, and Ralph Waples published two studies on writing for adults with limited reading ability. In 1935, educational psychologist William S. Gray
teamed up with Bernice Leary to publish their study, "What Makes a Book Readable."
at Teachers College in Columbia University led efforts to supply average readers with more books of substance dealing with science and current events. Bryson's students include Irving Lorge and Rudolf Flesch
, who became leaders in the plain-language movement. In 1975, Flesch collaborated with J. Peter Kincaid
to create the Flesch-Kincaid readability test
, which uses an algorithm to produce grade level scores that predict the level of education required to read the selected text. The instrument looks at word length (number of letters) and sentence length (number of words) and produces a score that is tied to a U.S. grade school level. For example, a score of 8.0 means that an eighth grader can read the document.
Others who later led plain language and readability research include educator Edgar Dale of Ohio State, Jeanne S. Chall of the Reading Laboratory of Harvard, and George R. Klare of Ohio University. Their efforts spurred the publication of over 200 readability formulas and 1,000 published studies on readability.
Beginning in 1935, a series of literacy surveys showed that the average reader in the U.S. was an adult of limited reading ability. Today, the average adult in the U.S. reads at the 9th-grade level.
Access to health information, educational and economic development
opportunities, and government programs is often referred to in a social justice context. To ensure more community members can access this information, many adult educators, legal writers, and social program developers use plain language principles when they develop public documents. The goal of plain language translation is to increase accessibility for those with lower literacy levels.
In the United States, movement towards Plain English began in the 1940s through the pen of Stuart Chase
. In 1953, Chase wrote The Power of Words, in which he complained about gobbledygook and legalese in English semantics, with an emphasis on political and legal discourse.
In North American industry, the plain language movement began in the 1970s when First National City Bank (now Citibank
) launched the first plain language consumer loan documents. Concerned about the large number of suits against its customers to collect bad debts, the bank voluntarily made the decision to implement plain language policies in 1973. That same decade, the consumer-rights movement won legislation that required plain language in contracts, insurance policies, and government regulations. American law school
s began requiring students to take legal writing classes that encouraged them to use plain English as much as possible and to avoid legal jargon, except when absolutely necessary. Public outrage with the skyrocketing number of unreadable government forms led to the Paperwork Reduction Act
of 1980.
In 1972, the Plain Language Movement received practical political application, when President Richard Nixon
decreed that the “Federal Register be written in layman’s terms.” On March 23, 1978, U.S. President Jimmy Carter
signed Executive Order 12044, which said that federal officials must see that each regulation is "written in plain English and understandable to those who must comply with it." President Ronald Reagan rescinded these orders in 1981, but many political agencies continued to follow them. By 1991, eight states had also passed legislation related to plain language.
In June 1998, President Bill Clinton
issued a memorandum that called for executive departments and agencies to use plain language in all government documents. Vice President Al Gore
subsequently spearheaded a plain language initiative that formed a group called the Plain Language Action Network (PLAIN) to provide plain language training to government agencies.
when President Barack Obama
signed the Plain Writing Act of 2010
, which required federal executive agencies to put all new and revised covered documents into plain language. The Act's sponsor, U.S. Representative Bruce Braley
, noted upon its passage that "Writing documents in plain language will increase government accountability and will save Americans time and money".
Plain language is also gaining traction in U.S. courts and legal aid
agencies . California was the first state to adopt plain language court forms and instructions, for which it received the 2003 Burton Award
for Outstanding Reform. A 2006 comparative study of plain language court forms concluded that "plain language court forms and instructions are better understood, easier to use, and more economical".
Great Britain
Shakespeare parodied the pretentious style, as in the speeches of Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing
.
The plain, or native style was, in fact, an entire literary tradition during the English Renaissance, from Skelton through Ben Jonson and including such poets as Barnabe Googe, George Gascoyne, Walter Raleigh, and perhaps the later work of Fulke Greville. In addition to its purely linguistic plainness, the Plain Style employed an emphatic, pre-Petrarchan prosody
(each syllable either clearly stressed or clearly unstressed).
George Orwell
’s 1946 essay "Politics and the English Language
" decried the pretentious diction, meaninglessness, vagueness, and worn-out idioms of political jargon. In 1979, the Plain English Campaign
was founded in London to combat "gobbledegook, jargon and legalese".
Plain language strives to be easy to read, understand, and use. It avoids verbose, convoluted language and jargon. In many countries, laws mandate that public agencies use plain language to increase access to programs and services.
Definition
Most literacyLiteracy
Literacy has traditionally been described as the ability to read for knowledge, write coherently and think critically about printed material.Literacy represents the lifelong, intellectual process of gaining meaning from print...
and communications scholars agree that plain language means:
- "Clear and effective communication" (Joseph Kimble)
- "The idiomatic and grammatical use of language that most effectively presents ideas to the reader" (Bryan Garner)
- "Clear, straightforward expression, using only as many words as are necessary. It is language that avoids obscurity, inflated vocabulary and convoluted construction. It is not baby talk, nor is it a simplified version of ... language." (Dr Robert Eagleson)
- "A literary style that is easy-to-read because it matches the reading skill of the audience" (William DuBayWilliam DuBayWilliam DuBay was a U.S. Catholic priest and social activist whose reform activities and suspension from the priesthood created controversy in the mid-1960s....
) - "Language that is clear, concise and correct" (Richard Wydick)
Examples
In Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black PearlPirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl is a 2003 adventure fantasy film based on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney theme parks. It was directed by Gore Verbinski and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer...
, the phrase "I am disinclined to acquiesce to your request" simply means "No." The pretentious dialogue Elizabeth Swann
Elizabeth Swann
Elizabeth Swann is a major character in the Pirates of the Caribbean film series produced by Walt Disney Pictures. She appears in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl and its two sequels, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End...
attempts to use as a gate-keeping device against Jack Sparrow illustrates how jargon and pretentious language can be used as a barrier between classes.
The following table contains examples of before-and-after plain language text from existing public documents.
| Original text | Plain language |
|---|---|
| High-quality learning environments are a necessary precondition for facilitation and enhancement of the ongoing learning process. | Children need good schools if they are to learn properly. |
| Firearm relinquishment is a mandatory condition. | You must turn in your guns. |
| This temporary injunction remains in effect against both parties until the final decree of divorce or order of legal separation is entered, the complaint is dismissed, the parties reach agreement, or until the court modifies or dissolves this injunction. This injunction shall not preclude either party from applying to the court for further temporary orders, an extended injunction or modification or revocation of this temporary injunction. | You must follow this order unless the court changes or ends it, your case is finalized or dismissed, or you and your spouse make an agreement. Either spouse may ask the court to change or cancel this order. |
History
CiceroCicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero , was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Roman constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the equestrian order, and is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.He introduced the Romans to the chief...
argued, “When you wish to instruct, be brief; that men's minds take in quickly what you say, learn its lesson, and retain it faithfully. Every word that is unnecessary only pours over the side of a brimming mind.” Cicero writes that the plain style is not easy. While it may seem close to everyday speech, achieving the effect in formal discourse is a high and difficult art: "Plainness of style seems easy to imitate at first thought, but when attempted, nothing is more difficult."
Plainness does not mean the absence of all ornaments, only the more obvious ones. Cicero recognizes what Aristotle
Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
had already pointed out, that a well-turned metaphor
Metaphor
A metaphor is a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea; e.g., "Her eyes were glistening jewels." Metaphor may also be used for any rhetorical figures of speech that achieve their effects via...
or simile
Simile
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two different things, usually by employing the words "like", "as". Even though both similes and metaphors are forms of comparison, similes indirectly compare the two ideas and allow them to remain distinct in spite of their similarities, whereas...
can help us see a relation we had not recognized. In fact, he makes use of metaphor and simile to teach us what the plain style is all about:
... although it is not full-blooded, it should nevertheless have some of the sap of life so that, though it lack great strength, it may be, so to speak, in sound health.... Just as some women are said to be handsomer when unadorned... so this plain style gives pleasure when unembellished.... All noticeable pearls, as it were, will be excluded. Not even curling irons will be used. All cosmetics, artificial white and red, will be rejected. Only elegance and neatness will remain. (The Orator, xxiii, 76-79)
19th Century
By the end of the 19th century, scholars began to study the features of plain language. In 1893 a Professor of English Literature at the University of Nebraska, A. L. Sherman, wrote Analytics of Literature: A manual for the objective study of English prose and poetry. In this work, Sherman showed that the English sentence has shortened over time and that spoken English is a pattern for written English.Sherman wrote:
Literary English, in short, will follow the forms of the standard spoken English from which it comes. No man should talk worse than he writes, no man writes better than he should talk.... The oral sentence is clearest because it is the product of millions of daily efforts to be clear and strong. It represents the work of the race for thousands of years in perfecting an effective instrument of communication.
1900 to 1950
Two 1921 works, Harry Kitson's "The Mind of the Buyer," and Edward L. Thorndike's "The Teacher's Word Book" picked up where Sherman left off. Kitson's work was the first to apply empirical psychology to advertising. He advised the use of short words and sentences. Thorndike's work contained the frequency ratings of 10,000 words. He recommended using the ratings in his book to grade books not only for students in schools but also for average readers and adults learning English. Thorndike wrote:
It is commonly assumed that children and adults prefer trashy stories in large measure because they are more exciting and more stimulating in respect to sex. There is, however, reason to believe that greater ease of reading in respect to vocabulary, construction, and facts, is a very important cause of preference. A count of the vocabulary of "best sellers" and a summary of it in terms of our list would thus be very instructive.
The 1930s saw many studies on how to make texts more readable. In 1931, Douglas Tyler and Ralph Waples published the results of their two-year study, "What People Want to Read About." In 1934, Ralph Ojemann, Edgar Dale
Edgar Dale
Edgar Dale was an American educationist who developed the Cone of Experience. He made several contributions to audio and visual instruction, including a methodology for analyzing the content of motion pictures. Born and raised in North Dakota he received a B.A. and M.A. from the Universtiy of...
, and Ralph Waples published two studies on writing for adults with limited reading ability. In 1935, educational psychologist William S. Gray
William S. Gray
Dr. William S. Gray was an American educator and literacy advocate.-Life and career:Gray was born in the town of Coatsburg, Illinois on June 5, 1885. He graduated from High School in 1904 and began teaching in a one room school house in Adams County, Illinois...
teamed up with Bernice Leary to publish their study, "What Makes a Book Readable."
1951 to 2000
Lyman BrysonLyman Bryson
Lyman Bryson was an American educator and media adviser. Born in Valentine, Nebraska, and educated at the University of Michigan, Bryson was a frequent guest on the radio game show Information, Please. He also served as a consultant to the CBS radio and television networks where he moderated the...
at Teachers College in Columbia University led efforts to supply average readers with more books of substance dealing with science and current events. Bryson's students include Irving Lorge and Rudolf Flesch
Rudolf Flesch
Rudolf Flesch was an author , and also a readability expert and writing consultant who was a vigorous proponent of plain English in the United States. He created the Flesch Reading Ease test and was co-creator of the Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test...
, who became leaders in the plain-language movement. In 1975, Flesch collaborated with J. Peter Kincaid
J. Peter Kincaid
J. Peter Kincaid is a scientist and educator who is the founding director of the Modeling and Simulation Ph.D. program at the University of Central Florida. Trained as a human factors psychologist at the Ohio State University, Kincaid has split his career between higher education and working as a...
to create the Flesch-Kincaid readability test
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
The Flesch/Flesch–Kincaid readability tests are designed to indicate comprehension difficulty when reading a passage of contemporary academic English. There are two tests, the Flesch Reading Ease, and the Flesch–Kincaid Grade Level...
, which uses an algorithm to produce grade level scores that predict the level of education required to read the selected text. The instrument looks at word length (number of letters) and sentence length (number of words) and produces a score that is tied to a U.S. grade school level. For example, a score of 8.0 means that an eighth grader can read the document.
Others who later led plain language and readability research include educator Edgar Dale of Ohio State, Jeanne S. Chall of the Reading Laboratory of Harvard, and George R. Klare of Ohio University. Their efforts spurred the publication of over 200 readability formulas and 1,000 published studies on readability.
Beginning in 1935, a series of literacy surveys showed that the average reader in the U.S. was an adult of limited reading ability. Today, the average adult in the U.S. reads at the 9th-grade level.
Access to health information, educational and economic development
Economic development
Economic development generally refers to the sustained, concerted actions of policymakers and communities that promote the standard of living and economic health of a specific area...
opportunities, and government programs is often referred to in a social justice context. To ensure more community members can access this information, many adult educators, legal writers, and social program developers use plain language principles when they develop public documents. The goal of plain language translation is to increase accessibility for those with lower literacy levels.
In the United States, movement towards Plain English began in the 1940s through the pen of Stuart Chase
Stuart Chase
Stuart Chase was an American economist and engineer trained at MIT. His writings covered topics as diverse as general semantics and physical economy. His hybrid background of engineering and economics places him in the same philosophical camp as R. Buckminster Fuller...
. In 1953, Chase wrote The Power of Words, in which he complained about gobbledygook and legalese in English semantics, with an emphasis on political and legal discourse.
In North American industry, the plain language movement began in the 1970s when First National City Bank (now Citibank
Citibank
Citibank, a major international bank, is the consumer banking arm of financial services giant Citigroup. Citibank was founded in 1812 as the City Bank of New York, later First National City Bank of New York...
) launched the first plain language consumer loan documents. Concerned about the large number of suits against its customers to collect bad debts, the bank voluntarily made the decision to implement plain language policies in 1973. That same decade, the consumer-rights movement won legislation that required plain language in contracts, insurance policies, and government regulations. American law school
Law school
A law school is an institution specializing in legal education.- Law degrees :- Canada :...
s began requiring students to take legal writing classes that encouraged them to use plain English as much as possible and to avoid legal jargon, except when absolutely necessary. Public outrage with the skyrocketing number of unreadable government forms led to the Paperwork Reduction Act
Paperwork Reduction Act
The Paperwork Reduction Act of 1980, Pub. L. No. 96-511, 94 Stat. 2812 , codified in part at Subchapter I of Chapter 35 of Title 44 of the United States Code, through , is a United States federal law enacted in 1980 that gave authority over the collection of certain information to the Office of...
of 1980.
In 1972, the Plain Language Movement received practical political application, when President Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...
decreed that the “Federal Register be written in layman’s terms.” On March 23, 1978, U.S. President Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter
James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. is an American politician who served as the 39th President of the United States and was the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, the only U.S. President to have received the Prize after leaving office...
signed Executive Order 12044, which said that federal officials must see that each regulation is "written in plain English and understandable to those who must comply with it." President Ronald Reagan rescinded these orders in 1981, but many political agencies continued to follow them. By 1991, eight states had also passed legislation related to plain language.
In June 1998, President Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...
issued a memorandum that called for executive departments and agencies to use plain language in all government documents. Vice President Al Gore
Al Gore
Albert Arnold "Al" Gore, Jr. served as the 45th Vice President of the United States , under President Bill Clinton. He was the Democratic Party's nominee for President in the 2000 U.S. presidential election....
subsequently spearheaded a plain language initiative that formed a group called the Plain Language Action Network (PLAIN) to provide plain language training to government agencies.
21st Century
PLAIN provided guidance to federal executive agenciesExecutive agency
An executive agency, also known as a next-step agency, is a part of a government department that is treated as managerially and budgetarily separate in order to carry out some part of the executive functions of the United Kingdom government, Scottish Government, Welsh Assembly or Northern Ireland...
when President Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
signed the Plain Writing Act of 2010
Plain Writing Act of 2010
Signed into law on October 13, 2010, the Plain Writing Act of 2010 is a United States federal law that requires that federal executive agencies:* Use plain writing in every covered document that the agency issues or substantially revises...
, which required federal executive agencies to put all new and revised covered documents into plain language. The Act's sponsor, U.S. Representative Bruce Braley
Bruce Braley
Bruce Braley is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 2007. He is a member of the Democratic Party. The district lies in northeastern Iowa and includes Davenport, Bettendorf, Cedar Falls, Waterloo, Dubuque, and Clinton....
, noted upon its passage that "Writing documents in plain language will increase government accountability and will save Americans time and money".
Plain language is also gaining traction in U.S. courts and legal aid
Legal aid
Legal aid is the provision of assistance to people otherwise unable to afford legal representation and access to the court system. Legal aid is regarded as central in providing access to justice by ensuring equality before the law, the right to counsel and the right to a fair trial.A number of...
agencies . California was the first state to adopt plain language court forms and instructions, for which it received the 2003 Burton Award
Burton Awards for Legal Achievement
Nature of the Burton Awards: The awards program is designed to reward major achievements in the law ranging from literary awards to the greatest reform in law. The awards are selected, generally, by professors from Harvard Law School, the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and the University of...
for Outstanding Reform. A 2006 comparative study of plain language court forms concluded that "plain language court forms and instructions are better understood, easier to use, and more economical".
Great BritainGreat BritainGreat Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...
Shakespeare parodied the pretentious style, as in the speeches of Dogberry in Much Ado About NothingMuch Ado About Nothing
Much Ado About Nothing is a comedy written by William Shakespeare about two pairs of lovers, Benedick and Beatrice, and Claudio and Hero....
.
The plain, or native style was, in fact, an entire literary tradition during the English Renaissance, from Skelton through Ben Jonson and including such poets as Barnabe Googe, George Gascoyne, Walter Raleigh, and perhaps the later work of Fulke Greville. In addition to its purely linguistic plainness, the Plain Style employed an emphatic, pre-Petrarchan prosody
Prosody (linguistics)
In linguistics, prosody is the rhythm, stress, and intonation of speech. Prosody may reflect various features of the speaker or the utterance: the emotional state of the speaker; the form of the utterance ; the presence of irony or sarcasm; emphasis, contrast, and focus; or other elements of...
(each syllable either clearly stressed or clearly unstressed).
George Orwell
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
’s 1946 essay "Politics and the English Language
Politics and the English Language
"Politics and the English Language" is an essay by George Orwell criticizing "ugly and inaccurate" contemporary written English.Orwell said that political prose was formed "to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." Orwell believed...
" decried the pretentious diction, meaninglessness, vagueness, and worn-out idioms of political jargon. In 1979, the Plain English Campaign
Plain English Campaign
The Plain English Campaign is a commercial editing and training firm based in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1979 by Chrissie Maher, the company positions itself as a leader in plain-language advocacy, working to persuade organisations in the UK and abroad to communicate with the public in plain...
was founded in London to combat "gobbledegook, jargon and legalese".
See also
- AureationAureationAureation is a device in arts of rhetoric that involves the "gilding" of diction in one language by the introduction of terms from another, typically a classical language considered to be more prestigious. It can be seen as analogous to gothic schools of ornamentation in carving, painting or...
- ReadabilityReadabilityReadability is the ease in which text can be read and understood. Various factors to measure readability have been used, such as "speed of perception," "perceptibility at a distance," "perceptibility in peripheral vision," "visibility," "the reflex blink technique," "rate of work" , "eye...
- Plain EnglishPlain EnglishPlain English is a generic term for communication styles that emphasise clarity, brevity and the avoidance of technical language – particularly in relation to official government communication, including laws.The intention is to write in a manner that is easily understood by the target...
- William S. GrayWilliam S. GrayDr. William S. Gray was an American educator and literacy advocate.-Life and career:Gray was born in the town of Coatsburg, Illinois on June 5, 1885. He graduated from High School in 1904 and began teaching in a one room school house in Adams County, Illinois...
- George R. KlareGeorge R. KlareGeorge R. Klare was a World War II veteran and a distinguished professor of psychology and dean at Ohio University. His field was statistical psychology and his major contribution was in the field of readability. From the beginning of the 20th century, the assessment of the grade level of texts...
- Plain English CampaignPlain English CampaignThe Plain English Campaign is a commercial editing and training firm based in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1979 by Chrissie Maher, the company positions itself as a leader in plain-language advocacy, working to persuade organisations in the UK and abroad to communicate with the public in plain...
- Plain Language MovementPlain Language MovementThe Plain Language Movement is an effort to eliminate unnecessarily complex language from academia, government, law, and business.International and national organizations in the movement include:...
- Scribes: The American Society of Legal WritersScribes: The American Society of Legal WritersScribes is an organization dedicated to encouraging legal writers and improving legal writing throughout the entire legal community — in court, in the law office, in the publishing house, and in law school. Founded in 1953, Scribes is the oldest organization of its kind...
- List of Germanic and Latinate equivalents in English
- Plain Writing Act of 2010Plain Writing Act of 2010Signed into law on October 13, 2010, the Plain Writing Act of 2010 is a United States federal law that requires that federal executive agencies:* Use plain writing in every covered document that the agency issues or substantially revises...
External links
- Clarity (the lawyers' movement for plain legal language)
- http://www.plainlanguage.gov
- The Plain Language Association International (PLAIN)
- The Plain Writing Association (PWA)
- Plain language and legislation booklet: Office of the Scottish Parliamentary Counsel
- http://www.dcf.state.fl.us/plainlanguage
- Clarity Rating Calculator
- Plain language documents: Before & After