Writing, Clear and Simple

If the members of the U.S. Senate join their colleagues in the House of Representatives, plain language may soon become the law of the land. The House recently passed H.R. 3548, the Plain Language in Government Communications Act, which would require Federal agencies to use plain language in new or revised documents (letters, publications, forms, notices, or instructions) intended for public consumption.

Congressman Bruce Braley made the following comments about H.R. 3548 on the floor of the House of Representatives:

Anyone who’s done their own taxes knows the headache of trying to understand pages and pages of confusing forms and instructions.  There is no reason why the federal government can’t write tax documents and other public documents in language we can all understand.

Writing government documents in plain language will increase government accountability and will save Americans time and money.  Plain, straightforward language makes it easy for taxpayers to understand what the federal government is doing and what services it is offering.

What a concept: Government documents that are easy to understand.

I guess it made sense in Congress.  H.R. 3548 passed 376 to 1. (I wonder who voted against it, and why?)

A companion bill, S. 2291, has gone to the full Senate for a vote. Contact your senators and encourage them to support this bill.

Annetta Cheek and the rest of the crew over at the Center for Plain Language are working on a bill that would require federal agencies to improve communication with the public “by writing regulations and other documents intended for public distribution in plain language.” They’d like your help in this effort. If you have a story about how confusing government language has caused problems for you, leave a comment on this topic, and I’ll help you get in touch with Annetta.

Thanks!

Latin was once the universal language—the lingua franca—among academics, and many writers would use Latin phrases and abbreviations—such as using sine qua non to describe something or someone essential, or saying Sic transit gloria mundi when someone fell from public favor—to show their erudition. (Nowadays, most people who want to show off their erudition use $25 words like erudition instead of two-bit words like book learnin’.)

Few of the phrases and abbreviations that once were common in writing appear anymore; for example, one only encounters viz. (an abbreviation for videlicet*, meaning namely or  that is) when you read older books and articles.

 Some Latin words still hang around—such as etc., e.g., and i.e.—so the question remains: Should one use them in writing?

There isn’t a rule  for this. Some words, like etc., are so commonly used that almost everyone knows what they mean. Some—like versus—have become assimilated into the English lexicon, and there’s really no better “English” word.

Others, although people use them frequently, are troublemakers. For example, people do like to use e.g. (an abbreviation for exempli gratia, which means for example) and i.e. (id est, or that is), but they frequently mix them up, using e.g. when they should have used i.e., and vice versa**.

If you want a rule for these things, then I suppose this is it: Use Latin words, phrases, and abbreviations only if you’re positive that your audience already knows what they mean, or if you’re prepared to explain them. If you’re writing a political screed and want to toss in the phrase Carthago delenda est, then be prepared to explain that it means “Carthage must be destroyed.”

Question them all. Most of all, question the abbreviations. The point of abbreviations is to shorten things up and save the reader time, not you. It may take less time for you to write e.g. instead of for example, but if it causes your reader to pause for a moment and puzzle out whether you mean for example or that is, then you should do the extra (little bit of) work and write it out in ordinary English.

*Don’t ask me to explain how the z got in the abbreviated form when it isn’t in the unabbreviated form. It’s not a pretty story.

**Here’s another example of a completely assimilated Latin phrase. English is rather like the Borg in some respects. (I forget the exact quote, or who said it, but someone once said something like “English does not borrow from other languages. It beats them up in dark alleyways and rifles through their pockets for spare words.”) 

Matthew Stibbe points out this passage from a review of Carly Fiorina’s book, Tough Choices:

Her bigger theme is leadership, and this is where Ms Fiorina fails. Again and again, she interrupts a good narrative with vain and verbose harangues about corporate strategy. From one paragraph to the next, her language becomes wooden and cliched as she descends into meaningless jargon. Things such as “frameworks” are constantly being “leveraged”, usually “proactively” and “going forward”. Like most former chiefs in search of redemption, Ms Fiorina wants to be remembered as a corporate philosopher. She won’t be.

Any sort of jargon is not, in and of itself, a bad thing. Any specialty area will develop its own vocabulary, its own set of terms that have special meanings within that discipline.

But all to often, they’re used to give an aura of importance to rather plain ideas. What does leverage mean, outside of the context of discussing levers, or high finance? Most often, it means little more than “use.” “We’ll leverage our core competencies…” But the polysyllabic (which is just a big word for big word) leverage sounds more impressive, doesn’t it?

As my eldest daughter likes to say, “Um, yeah, no.”

If you want people to think you’re intelligent, write simply. It’s not as contradictory as it sounds, and there’s evidence to support it. Prize-winning evidence, in fact.

Dr. Daniel Oppenheimer of Princeton University has won the Ig Nobel Prize in Literature for his study, “Consequences of erudite vernacular utilized irrespective of necessity: problems with using long words needlessly.” Here’s a bit from the abstract:

Most texts on writing style encourage authors to avoid overly-complex words. However, a majority of undergraduates admit to deliberately increasing the complexity of their vocabulary so as to give the impression of intelligence. This paper explores the extent to which this strategy is effective. Experiments 1-3 manipulate complexity of texts and find a negative relationship between complexity and judged intelligence.

That last sentence means “when the words and sentences got bigger, readers thought the writer was dumber.” 

(I’m afraid I can’t find the article online, only the abstract linked above. I need to get over to the library and find out if they have that journal.)

 Hat tip to Ray Ward.