The Plain English Campaign is 30 today. I dread to think how much turgid corporate prose they've had to wade through in that time. They've done a great job, and those of us helping organisations with language need all the allies we can find, but there's a problem.
Sure, there's a lot of rubbish still being written in the name of customer and employee communication, and no-one would expect the PEC to put everything right even in 30 years. It's the target, the aspiration that is troubling: plain english.
While the good fight is being fought against over-complication and obscure vocabulary there's a greater good we can all aim for. Why shouldn't the language of business be rich, entertaining and memorable? Clear is good; dull is not.
So, no apologies from me for coming back to a theme I've covered before. While some can only hope to be plain, do what you can to stick out from the crowd - use language that's alive.
I think part of the problem is that business writing has actually got worse over the years. The influence of the business schools, particularly ones in the US, have helped bring about an explosion in management jargon.
This means so much more time has to be spent teaching managers how to write in a comprehensible fashion.
Personally, I don't interpret plain English to mean dull English. I just see it as a way of expressing language clearly, something which is still too often a rarity!
Posted by: Liz Tucker | 26/02/2010 at 02:21 PM
Yes, I agree. Plain English needs to be interesting.
When completing business writing projects it's often a balancing act between keeping it simple and making it memorable. One tip is to vary sentence length in your business writing. Have short and long sentences but keep the average at 20 words per sentence or less.
We cover business writing on our blog at Word Nerds.
Posted by: Michael Gladkoff | 28/01/2010 at 09:50 PM