Past newsletters 2002

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Plain English update 20 December 2002

Some of our youngest supporters reported this week that it isn't always the most technologically advanced toys and gifts that have the most complicated instructions. A mobile phone booklet was one of the clearest in a study, while a 'Lord of the Rings' game caused utter confusion.

The testing project was the idea of fifteen-year-old Katey Brown, granddaughter of the Campaign's founder-director Chrissie Maher. She and a group of friends tested the instructions for six popular gifts for children: a digital camera, a card game, a 'build your own robot' set, an electronic game, a mobile phone and a board game.

The group praised the Samsung T100 mobile phone's instruction booklet, describing it as 'easy to understand, clear and reliable'. But they were less impressed with Tiger's 'Lights Out' electronic game. Katey said 'It is hard to imagine anyone playing this game without reading the booklet five or six times at least.' She also condemned a 'Lords of the Ring' card game, saying 'I certainly would not recommend this game to anyone unless they have the patience of a saint.'

According to Katey, there are four main ways manufacturers could improve instructions:

• using one (not too long) booklet rather than several different leaflets, a huge piece of paper that folds up, or a computer spreadsheet;
• writing instructions in a logical order, for example explaining how to put the batteries in an electronic game before explaining how to play the game;
• including accurate pictures or photographs with the instructions so that you can see if you are following them correctly; and
• saying clearly on the box if you need anything extra to use the toy or game, such as tools or special computer equipment.

Plain English Campaign spokesman John Lister said parents and children should not stand for unclear instructions. 'As far as we're concerned, duff instruction leaflets are just as bad as having part of the gift missing. Katey and her friends have shown how testing instructions can uncover problems. It's time manufacturers followed their lead instead of risking Christmas Day being riddled by frustration and misery.'

The fortnight after our awards is always one of the more interesting times when it comes to the list of terms typed into the search facility on our website. Each year it seems several people, new to the Campaign, appear to have misunderstood what we are about. This year's batch of subjects that, sadly for the visitor concerned, are not covered on our site include 'art historians', 'mullet' and 'tramps'.

The two terms which tied for the most searches are 'Prescott' and 'education', followed by 'law', 'computer', 'football' and 'council'.

Thanks to Krysia Chambers for sending us details of what a cynical person might see as an attempt to confuse people. It's that old classic, the double negative.

A marketing firm has a survey on its webpage. At the end of a survey is a line with a tick box (already ticked) and the words 'please untick this box if you would not like us to contact you in the future.'

Jim Farrell of Brisbane, Australia kindly sent us a copy of a jargon-ridden advert for an education job. On first sight, it appears to be merely the usual waffle, with the successful applicant being able to 'Coordinate and undertake the development of planning, performance management and policy development through effective design and implementation of frameworks and systems that enable the achievement of strategic imperatives'.

However, the following line includes a particularly revealing spelling mistake.

'[Skills required include] extensive knowledge of the principals and practices underpinning performance measurement and educational measurement to facilitate the achievement of broader developmental goals and objectives in a complex and changing sector.'

Given that 'principals' is the term used in Australia to refer to 'head teachers', we can only assume it's not what you know, but who you know that matters...

There have been some worrying developments with our good friends at BBC's Working Lunch recently. On the day of the awards, host Adrian Chiles expressed his concern at the way he understood Richard Gere's 'Foot in Mouth' winning quote immediately. Then, this week, he read out a longwinded letter from the Inland Revenue and announced 'I hope the Plain English Campaign are watching'. The fact that at least one of our staff understood the letter straight away can only suggest we have built up an immunity to gobbledygook!

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Plain English update 13 December 2002

We begin this week with a big thank you to everyone who sent in nominations for our awards, helping to make the event (and the conference the following day) a great success. Our website had its busiest day in its five-year history, thanks largely to the worldwide media attention. One of the more memorable incidents came when our spokesman John Lister spoke to Radio Bogota in Colombia, with the help of an English to Spanish interpreter. The interpreter had no problems conveying our points about the need for clear communication. Unfortunately he was clearly baffled when it came to translating some of the Golden Bull winning texts!

There are several updates from the less desirable honours. Regarding Richard Gere, we shall simply say that he has many fans, and few of them have trouble with ambiguous or unclear communication...

Wrexham County Council leader Shan Wilkinson bravely appeared on the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 to discuss the letter that won the council a Golden Bull. She agreed that it was not suitable and said one improvement would be to begin the letter with a plain English explanation of the legal issues involved. She also promised to raise the issue of clear communication at the next council meeting.

Another award went to a lawyer who suggested a 'container' would be better described as 'a receptacle having at least one exterior surface and a plurality of walls defining a discrete object receiving volume'. One man wrote to us this week to tell us about the Klein bottle, a mathematical object that could contain material, but only has one surface (which acts as both exterior and interior). We won't try to explain in any more detail for fear of winning our own Golden Bull award. Instead we'll simply mention that the only drawback to the Klein bottle is that it requires a four-dimensional universe to exist!

And then we have the mysterious case of the award for the web page that promised 'inside-out organization which facilitates sticky web-readiness transforming turnkey eyeballs to brand 24/365 paradigms' among other business buzzwords.

We first came across the page last February and, having guessed something may be amiss, decided to consider it for a Golden Bull award only if it was still there in November. We then unsuccessfully attempted to contact whoever was behind the site to get an explanation.

Simon Watkins, the creator of the page containing the passage, wrote to us shortly after the ceremony. He explained that the words were 'filler text' while the page was in development.

While we have a touch of sadness that such gobbledygook turned out to be too good to be true, it does say something about the state of communication today that we ever considered it plausible!

Perhaps most worryingly, Mr Watkins explained that the text was created with a 'Business Mumbo Jumbo' feature for the Macromedia Dreamweaver software he used to create the page. Our next task will be to make sure this feature comes with a safety warning similar to the one on our gobbledygook generator.

In the meantime we will consider the Golden Bull to be an honorary award for genuine business-jargon users everywhere!

We have often raised the issue of how British people can face a £100 fine if they simply give up trying to complete a self-assessment tax form. However, a man in Sweden has paid a far higher price. An incredibly successful share trader named Robert Tingvall failed to fill in his tax return, explaining that 'the form is enormous; it takes an extremely long time to fill in.' Had he returned the form, he would have been entitled to pay a lower rate on tax of the money he made from shares. Instead Mr Tingvall is facing a bill for an extra £84 million.

Three customers of computer supplies firm jungle.com have written to us about an intriguing explanation for cancelled orders. The three, who ordered a keyboard, blank CDs and software respectively, each received the same e-mail:

'We are writing to advise you that we are currently in the process of consolidating our product range to ensure that the products that we stock are indicative of our brand aspirations. As part of our range consolidation we have also decided to revisit our supplier list and employ a more intelligent system for stock acquisition. As a result of the above certain product lines are now unavailable through jungle.com, whilst potentially remaining available from more mainstream suppliers.'

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