The Plain Language Movement is an effort to eliminate unnecessarily complex language from academia, government, law, and business.[1]
International and national organizations in the movement include:
Organizations that have endorsed plain language include the Legal Writing Institute, the Canadian Bar Association, and the Canadian Bankers Association.[10]
Contents |
The movement focuses attention on the information needs and the reading abilities of the reader and opposes writer-based prose, which is the tendency to use long sentences, jargon, and a formal style as a way to acquire authority, power, and credibility.
William Lutz, an American linguist specialising in doublespeak and the use of plain language, asserts that
"language is power, period. The lesson of Nineteen Eighty-Four is that those who rule the language, rule... The language of the lawyers, of the politicians, of the intelligentsia, is supposed to make [others] feel inferior."
An organization at the forefront of the plain language movement gives the following example:
"Before:
If you fail to comply with your duty of disclosure and we would not have entered into the contract on any terms if the failure had not occurred, we may void the contract within three years of entering into it. If your non- disclosure is fraudulent, we may void the contract at any time. Where we are entitled to void a contract of life insurance we may, within three years of entering into it, elect not to void it but to reduce the sum that you have been insured for in accordance with a formula that takes into account the premium that would have been payable if you had disclosed all relevant matters to us.
After:
If you fail to disclose any relevant matter and we would not offer you insurance if this matter were known, we may within three years (1) void the contract or (2) reduce the sum for which you have been insured. If your nondisclosure is fraudulent, we may void the contract at any time."
http://plainlanguagenetwork.org/Samples/index.html
The Plain Writing Act of 2010, signed into law on October 13, 2010, requires US federal agencies to use plain language in every covered document that the agency issues or substantially revises, and to train its employees in plain language.