External editing,
internal training

TO HELP SOLVE your plain-English workplace needs better, we have streamlined our services.  And we have overhauled the Plain English People website to reflect this. 

Our main focus is on editing and rewriting of documents.  This recognises that you are very busy with your expertise — and often closer to your subject than your audience.  An independent editing expert will help you make all your documents and publications look tidy, professional and consistent.  A plain English editor will help you translate your important information into the language of your readers.

Our second focus is training and coaching.  This recognises that your staff at the coal-face need writing support — so they can do the best for your organisation, your stakeholders, your public.

Please contact us if we can help in any way.

SPRING at last!  For any busy operation, a good place to start spring-cleaning is your written communications. 

Do your documents truly speak to those who will read them — or are they just old templates rehashed?  Are your document processes co-ordinated and efficient — or do you often run late and have to compromise on quality?  Could a practised, independent editorial eye be of value?

Springtime lends itself to clichés, such as ‘time to stop and smell the roses’ or ‘out with the old, in with the new’.  Read on to find our current top 10 clichés du jour of the business world.

Also in this issue are a couple of interesting published articles on modern language trends; some quick tips for powerful writing; and a list of what’s plain and what’s plainly not in public writing. 

Creating a level playing field

► SOCIAL networking contributes a swag of new words to Collins’s latest dictionary update.  (Read the full story)

► Lawyers bite back at a new sale-and-purchase form, translated into plain English so ordinary house-buyers can understand it.  (Read the full story)

► The British Government has launched a “public hearing on how government uses — and misuses — language”, according to a Times of London story.  Select committee chairman Tony Wright opened the hearing with: “Welcome stakeholders.  We look forward to rolling out our dialogue on a level playing field so that going forwards in a public domain we have a win-win step change.”  We wonder how many government workers picked up that this was a send-up.

Click here to read more news and views from the world of plain English.

Quick tips for writing in the fast lane

A NEW FEATURE of the Plain English People website is the revolving Tip of the Week on the home page.  Last week’s tip was Use headings.  This week’s tip is about Spell-checking.  Next week’s will be on Acronyms. 

If you want to see all our Quick tips in one go, click here.

What's plain, what's plainly not

WE BRING you three public resources that have gained praise for their user-friendly plain English wording.  And three lambasted for being complex, obtuse or unfriendly.

Plain:
1.  John Key’s “Top 10 reasons to visit New Zealand” performance on the Letterman Show (even though he didn’t script it himself).
2.  The global organisation PLAIN (Plain Language Association InterNational), holding its biennial conference this month in Sydney.
3.  The planned new-look primary and intermediate school reports.  (Read the full story) 

Plainly not:
1.  The Auckland Regional Council’s Draft Regional Parking Strategy, whose language is “vague to the point of coyness” (Sunday Star-Times editorial).
2.  Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s rambling 94-minute speech at the UN.  Before he had finished, according to one report, his translator shouted “I just can’t take it any more” and collapsed from exhaustion.
3.  The text of the Immigration Advisers Licensing Act, which came into effect recently.  It fails to advise migrants or their advisers in language that they might have any hope of understanding.

If I hear it one more time I'll scream

OUR TOP 10 business clichés that we hope to never hear again — but will anyway.  Listed Letterman-style (with John Key reading):

No 10: think outside the square/box   
No 9:   at the end of the day
No 8:   put in the hard yards
No 7:   is proudly brought to you by
No 6:   certain conditions apply
No 5:   the weakest link
No 4:   more bang for your buck
No 3:   get all one’s ducks in a row
No 2:   win the bragging rights to.

And the No 1 business cliché we love to hate... (drum roll) ...

No 1:   a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

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