"Winston Churchill might be well known for the battles he waged in the name of the Allied forces, but it is the lesser-known war he declared on the desecration of the English language that still rages.
At the height of the Battle of Britain, with war all around him, Churchill barked out an edict banning bureaucratese, legalese, officialese, jargon and other gobbledegook in favour of plain English. To him it was the fastest method of conveying concise, unambiguous messages to command.
As a practising plain English editor and writer, I can assure you this battle is coming at us on many fronts, from the supermarket shelves to our national capital. It is fed by intellectual vanity, fear of looking dumb, pesky lawyers (of course) and a public that has been bludgeoned into submission by its heavy, dull, self-important pedantry. This enemy of clarity and friend of the obscurantist feeds off our numb acceptance of it in our everyday lives.
Speaking of pesky lawyers, here's a sample of something I recently had to turn into plain English for a reluctant law firm: "The conditions of chapters 13 and 14 shall with modifications deemed as necessary extend and apply to and in relation to this Section and others, without affect to the aforementioned in the sense of its generality, in particular with the modification that any reference to plastic or plastic products shall be construed as a reference to rubber products also in full." That's 58 words. My solution was: "What chapters 13 and 14 say about plastic and plastic products also applies to rubber." That's 15 words — say no more!"
So say all of us! Read this "interesting" piece on the English language in the SMH - and the way it is increasingly abused - by Andrew Pegler, who describes himself as a plain English editor and copywriter.
At the height of the Battle of Britain, with war all around him, Churchill barked out an edict banning bureaucratese, legalese, officialese, jargon and other gobbledegook in favour of plain English. To him it was the fastest method of conveying concise, unambiguous messages to command.
As a practising plain English editor and writer, I can assure you this battle is coming at us on many fronts, from the supermarket shelves to our national capital. It is fed by intellectual vanity, fear of looking dumb, pesky lawyers (of course) and a public that has been bludgeoned into submission by its heavy, dull, self-important pedantry. This enemy of clarity and friend of the obscurantist feeds off our numb acceptance of it in our everyday lives.
Speaking of pesky lawyers, here's a sample of something I recently had to turn into plain English for a reluctant law firm: "The conditions of chapters 13 and 14 shall with modifications deemed as necessary extend and apply to and in relation to this Section and others, without affect to the aforementioned in the sense of its generality, in particular with the modification that any reference to plastic or plastic products shall be construed as a reference to rubber products also in full." That's 58 words. My solution was: "What chapters 13 and 14 say about plastic and plastic products also applies to rubber." That's 15 words — say no more!"
So say all of us! Read this "interesting" piece on the English language in the SMH - and the way it is increasingly abused - by Andrew Pegler, who describes himself as a plain English editor and copywriter.
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