Facts

• Plain English has saved the British Government an estimated £500 million in the last two decades.

• The Crystal Mark, launched in 1990, is a guarantee that a document has reached our standards of plain English. More than 14,000 documents carry the Crystal Mark.

• Nearly 1500 organisations have documents that display the Crystal Mark, including more than 300 local authorities, more than 100 government departments and more than 150 health organisations.

• In the first few years of the campaign, winners of the annual Golden Bull awards for prime gobbledygook received a pound of tripe in the post. Health regulations mean they now have to settle for a Golden Bull trophy.

• Possibly the worst piece of public information we have ever fought was a 1983 form by the DHSS. The Supplementary Benefit claim form asked 160 questions. In early tests, 80% of people made mistakes filling in the form.

• We have worked in the United States, South Africa, Australia, Denmark, Ireland, Ghana, Hong Kong, Finland, Brazil, India, Sweden, Belgium, The Netherlands, Israel and Switzerland.

• Tom McArthur, editor of the Oxford Companion to the English Language, said: 'In all the history of the language, there has never been such a powerful grass‑roots movement to influence it as the Plain English Campaign.'

• Founder-director Chrissie Maher grew up in a run-down Liverpool slum shared with 11 other family members, but has now earned an honorary Master of Arts, a listing in Who's Who and an OBE.

• We once encouraged taxpayers to attach a halfpenny piece to their tax returns to help fund a plain English rewrite. Rumour has it that a distant cousin of Hector the Inspector is still trying to keep account of the halfpennies.

• With the campaign's help, British Aerospace redrafted a 150‑page international leasing agreement in just 50 pages. The first time the new document was used, a £120 million deal took just three and a half weeks to complete, instead of the previous average of six months.

• Plain English can save your business money. It is estimated that poor customer service costs companies almost £14 billion a year. Royal Mail saved £500,000 in nine months by redesigning one commonly-used form in plain English. British Telecom cut customer queries by 25% by using plain English. And in the US, General Electric saved $275,000 by redrafting manuals into plain English.

• In 1995, we helped draft the Human Rights Commission Bill in South Africa. The result proved that plain English legislation was achievable.

• In 1998, two of our staff visited five continents in 80 days as part of a world tour of plain English seminars.

• Thanks to our lobbying in Europe, it is now impossible to enforce consumer contracts that are not in 'plain, intelligible language'.

• Gobbledygook is a 20th-century American word. Foreign alternatives include 'charabia' (France), 'Kauderwelsch' (Germany), 'koeterwaals' (Holland) and 'gergo incomprensibile' (Italy).
  

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