Caryn Gootkin attempts to provide Joe Public with a comprehensive, but user-friendly definition of Plain Language to enable compliance with the legislative imperative contained in the Consumer Protection Act.
In my previous plain language columns I pointed out that s22 of the CPA, which compels us to communicate in plain language in certain instances, is itself decidedly unplain. (Did I just coin a neologism? I have always wanted to.)
Despite compelling us to change the way we write, the Consumer Protection Act contains no guidelines on how to do so. The CPA, and other Acts that also mandate the use of plain language (and are written in even more complex language), fall into the “do as I say not as I do” category of legislation.
So our challenge is to cobble together our own principles of plain language and apply them until the National Consumer Commission publishes its regulations in this regard. Who knows, they may even wish to borrow from our research.
“Doe, a deer, a female deer”. Don’t worry, I don’t intend making you swallow a spoonful of linguistic medicine, but defining Plain Language seems to me to be “a very good place to start”.
Popular definitions
Before analysing the definitions provided by plain language advocates the world over, I did a quick straw poll among my family and twitter followers. Their challenge was to send me their off-the-cuff understanding of the words “plain language”. The results included: –
“Plain language to me is language that doesn’t require any specialist knowledge or training to understand – regardless of if it’s legal, medical, scientific etc.”
“Simple, easily understandable words, phrases, sentences”
“Easily understandable, everyday contemporary language without the need to refer to any outside sources”
“Easy, user-friendly text/words that you can make sense of without a dictionary”
Each of the interpretations I received refers to one aspect of plain language and read together they produce a fairly comprehensive explanation of what I refer to as the first pillar of plain language. The responses confirmed my hunch that most people view the concept in this, its narrow sense.
The Plain Language torchbearers
To explain the four pillars of plain language, I will defer to the experts. As cynical as I am about things American, some of the world’s greatest plain language thinkers hail from the US of A, which isn’t surprising given how seriously their government takes it. In 2010 President Obama signed the Plain Writing Act compelling all federal agencies to use plain language.
This top-down approach must be seen against the backdrop of an army of federal foot soldiers who have been devoted to the cause for almost two decades. Calling themselves The Plain Language Action and Information Network (PLAIN), their stated goal is to promote the use of plain language for all government communications. Their website www.plainlanguage.gov is filled with resources to improve communication from the federal government to the public.
{I mentioned in a previous column that there are two organisations that refer to themselves as PLAIN. While I remain irritated by the cuteness of the acronym, I’ll put that aside and refer in these columns to The Plain Language Action and Information Network as PLAIN (USA) and the Plain Language Association International as PLAIN (Intl).}
The four pillars of Plain Language
One of only three definitions in the Plain Writing Act, plain writing “ means writing that is clear, concise, well-organized, and follows other best practices appropriate to the subject or field and intended audience.”
I like this definition because it encompasses in very few words the four broad elements or pillars of Plain Language:
- the actual words used;
- the arrangement or format of the writing;
- the appropriateness to the intended audience; and
- the context of the writing.
You will note immediately that all of my responders were describing 1 above (and, to some extent, 2).
There are several academics and legal thinkers who have written extensively and coherently on the subject.
Cheryl Stephens, a Canadian leader in plain language communications and editor of many books on the subject, succinctly explains the four facets on her website:
“Language that is clear, or plain, for one group of people may be nonsense to another. We must consider the readers’ cultural context, vocabulary, and expectations, and pay attention to document design and presentation as well as writing.” (https://cherylstephens.com//index.php?p=mediakit/aboutpl)
Many celebrated definitions of plain language focus on the first element only. One of my favourite comes from a book by Bryan A Garner, Legal Writing in Plain English.
“You achieve plain English when you use the simplest, most straightforward way of expressing an idea.” (ppxiv)
Plain language is not “dumbed down”
Nick Wright, of the US Environmental Protection Agency adds that it “is simple and direct but not simplistic or patronizing.” (https://www.plainlanguage.gov/whatisPL/definitions/wright.cfm )This is an important point as many people wrongly assume that plain language is unsophisticated and involves “dumbing down”, which it most certainly should not.
In fact, the converse is often true. One of my first columns for themediaonline, https://themediaonline.co.za/2011/03/new-tricks-for-old-dogs-converting-legalese-into-plain-language-part-1/, explored why lawyers seem genetically incapable of writing in plain language. One of the reasons I proposed was that legalese is often used “to intimidate and confound”.
Lawyers are certainly not the only writers who mistakenly believe that using complex and convoluted language and sentence structures gives written text an air of erudition. Too many people and institutions hide behind big words and long sentences, perhaps because they are not confident enough in what they are saying to simply say it as it is.
So, where to from here?
Armed with a broad understanding of what it is, I am afraid you will have to wait for my next column for practical guidelines on how to communicate in Plain Language. (My editor will only push the word count boundary so far.)
One last thing
Before I go, I am aware that there is ongoing academic debate on both the conceptualisation of plain language and its shortcomings. My aim in these columns, however, is to provide a diverse audience with tools enabling them to communicate in plain language without having to study academic manuals and texts.
A fellow South African plain language practitioner, Frances Gordon of Simplified, commented in reply to my previous column, that “this definition (or explanation, if you will) is lauded by plain-language experts as one of the most comprehensive in the world. [It] is purposefully conceptual. It would be wrong for such a legislative definition to be too prescriptive.
Frances and her Simplified partner, Candice Burt, have co-written the chapter on plain language in Neville Melville’s book, The Consumer Protection Act: Made Easy, and I encourage those interested in a more theoretical discussion to read this. They also provide useful guidelines for writing in plain language and I will refer to these in future columns.
Follow Caryn on Twitter @inotherwordscg
