Past newsletters 2004

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Plain English update 30 January 2004

The cartoon strip 'Queen's Counsel', published in the law section of The Times, often pokes fun at the linguistic traits of the legal profession. The wording of this weeks edition read as follows.

'Crawley, your legal drafting is hopeless. Let me give you some tips. Never "sign"; instead "execute". Never "stop"; instead "estop". Don't "use", rather "utilise". Suffer and permit duplication and redundancy. And cease and desist from simplicity and clarity.'

'But Edward... I don't quite understand you.'

'Exactly dear boy. And with a bit of practice, no-one will understand you either.'

A couple of weeks ago we wrote about scientists finding that monkeys could only achieve a limited grasp of grammatical principles. There was another story from the animal kingdom this week when BBC Wildlife Magazine reported that a parrot in New York has not only learned almost a thousand words, but can also form coherent sentences up to 15 words long.

The six-year-old bird, named N'Kisi, learned to talk when his owner Aimee Morgana decided simply to talk to him as if he were a human child. At one point, seeing Ms Morgan picking up the beads from a necklace, N'Kisi apparently exclaimed 'Oh no, you broke your new necklace'. He can apparently cope with past, present and future tenses, but is sometimes thrown by 'illogical constructions'. For example, he will say 'flied' rather than 'flew'.

Lord Hutton published the findings of his widely-publicised inquiry this week. Naturally we aren't going to get involved in the political and journalistic arguments, but we thought the following paragraph from the report's conclusions would interest our readers. It shows the dangers and difficulties that arise from ambiguous expressions.

'The term "sexed-up" is a slang expression, the meaning of which lacks clarity in the context of the discussion of the dossier. It is capable of two different meanings. It could mean that the dossier was embellished with items of intelligence known or believed to be false or unreliable to make the case against Saddam Hussein stronger, or it could mean that whilst the intelligence contained in the dossier was believed to be reliable, the dossier was drafted in such a way as to make the case against Saddam Hussein as strong as the intelligence contained in it permitted. If the term is used in this latter sense, then because of the drafting suggestions made by 10 Downing Street for the purpose of making a strong case against Saddam Hussein, it could be said that the Government "sexed-up" the dossier. However in the context of the broadcasts in which the "sexing-up" allegation was reported and having regard to the other allegations reported in those broadcasts, I consider that the allegation was unfounded as it would have been understood by those who heard the broadcasts to mean that the dossier had been embellished with intelligence known or believed to be false or unreliable, which was not the case.'

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Plain English update 23 January 2004

A television researcher has asked us to help track down an expert on clear spoken (rather than written) English. She is looking for someone to take part in a programme by helping a professional woman to speak more plainly in her work situation. At the moment the woman never says what she really thinks but uses spin to hide her true meaning. The production company is looking for somebody who can act in a coaching role and is happy to appear on camera. If you have any suggestions, please let us know and we will pass on the details.

Meanwhile, a reader has asked if anyone who uses the London Underground can remember a series of adverts for a professional or financial services firm, written to parody a solicitor's use of legalese. Our reader is trying to track down a copy of the adverts, but cannot remember any other details.

We often hear comments from people confused by the fact that we are based in New Mills (Derbyshire) but have a Stockport (Cheshire) postcode. We don't entirely understand it ourselves, but we do know that post addressed to us with either county listed usually takes longer to arrive than that correctly addressed as PO Box 3, New Mills, High Peak, SK22 4QP.

So we had some sympathies with the management at what used to be called East Midlands Airport. The airport is located in Leicestershire, but the buildings have Derbyshire postcodes. Managers have solved the problem by renaming the facility as Nottingham East Midlands Airport, despite Derby being the closest city.

And if that's not confusing enough, there is already a Nottingham Airport, used for light aircraft.

We'll leave you this week with a translation challenge. If you think you can rewrite the following paragraphs (from a 'project overview') into plain English, let us know. We'll print the best suggestions next week.

'The project is structured around multifaceted incremental work plan combining novel content design based on new pedagogical paradigms blended with the e-learning environments to facilitate hybrid mode of delivery. This is combined with series of educational experiments on the target learner groups with possibilities to adjust the approach and disseminate the interim and final results.

'Our pedagogical approach is based on the educational model which assumes that the learning process is an interactive process of seeking understanding, consisting of three fundamental components: Conceptualization, Construction and Dialogue. The relevant modules of the New Curricula are mapped onto these three components and a hybrid way of delivery is investigated through different scenarios.'

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Plain English update 16 January 2004

We are quick to criticise when proposed laws are written in excessive legalese, so to be fair, we must say we were pleasantly surprised by the definition of 'emergency' in the recently-published Civil Contingencies Bill.

It says:

'In this Part "emergency" means an event or situation which threatens serious damage to:

(a) human welfare in a place in the United Kingdom,

(b) the environment of a place in the United Kingdom, or

(c) the security of the United Kingdom or of a place in the United Kingdom.'

The bill then lists a series of specific situations that are covered by these three categories.

We'll be interested to see how this wording fares in the legislative process -though naturally we hope it never needs to be used.

If you've ever read a document and thought to yourself that a monkey could do better, you might be wrong.

According to researchers at the University of St Andrews in Fife, attempts to teach grammar to a troop of monkeys have had limited success. The researchers trained the monkeys to look towards a loudspeaker when they heard mistakes in 'finite state grammar' which governs which words can appear next to each other.

However, the monkeys could not cope with 'phase structure grammar', where related words were in separate parts of a sentence (such as an 'If.... then' clause).

Several newspapers this week ran that old editorial standby, a feature on 'barmy politically-correct projects and pointless jobs'. (We must admit to a spell of head scratching at the prospect of becoming a 'Knowledge Transfer Team Leader'.)

We were very surprised to see the list of 'bizarre vacancies' included a Citizens Advice Bureau in London advertising for a 'Form Filling Project Worker': a position dedicated to helping benefit applicants fill in claim forms.

To us, this is hardly a worthless position. It's just a shame that it needs to exist at all.

We had an interesting phone call today, with the caller introducing himself by saying, 'I'm from (company name) and I wrote to you on Monday. Have you had a chance to look through the material yet?'

On hearing that we hadn't received his letter, the caller probably should have stopped rather than continue into his sales pitch.

'That's very odd. I don't understand why you didn't get our letter. Anyway, we wrote to tell you about our central mailing service. We can take your newsletter and deliver it by post to thousands of people, quickly and accurately...'

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Plain English update 9 January 2004

Every New Year's Day, Lake Superior State University in Michigan publishes a list of the words and phrases that the public has chosen to ceremonially ban for 'Mis-use, over-use or general uselesness'.

This year's list, based on the votes of more than 5000 people, includes:

• metrosexual (a hetrosexual urban male who takes pride in his appearance);
• X (when used with no specific meaning, such as 'The X Files' or X-Box);
• companion animals (in place of 'pets');
• captured alive (which raises questions of how you capture a dead person); and
• sweat like a pig (pigs don't have sweat glands so they roll in mud to keep cool).

Thanks to everyone who sent their opinions of the proposed wording for a possible referendum on joining the single European currency scheme ('Should the United Kingdom adopt the euro as its currency?').

Those who replied generally felt the wording was surprisingly clear and unambiguous and that people would not be confused or misled into voting for the 'wrong' option.

Some people thought that the question was insufficient as it stood to be politically neutral; the most common objection was that the question did not specifically state that the euro would replace the pound.

If you've ever struggled with flat-pack furniture instructions, there's now a course to help you make sense of them. Northampton College is offering a three-hour course, without charge, as part of a 'Bite Size' promotion to encourage adult learning.

As well as deciphering instructions, tutor John Tilley will deal with the 'freehand' approach where customers (usually 'dominant males') insist on trying to put the furniture together without consulting the instructions.

The Financial Services Authority has tightened its rules to make references to past performance clearer in financial advertising.

If an advert refers to past performance, it must now include a table showing the figures for the past five years (or for as far back as possible). If there is less than 12 months' data available, the firm cannot refer to past performance at all.

Firms are also specifically banned from implying or claiming any link between past and future performance.

We've all seen public figures trying to keep things vague and uncertain when they speak to journalists, perhaps trying to keep their true feelings hidden for the sake of professionalism.

Fausto Tonna, the chief financial officer of troubled Italian firm Parmalat, appears not to believe in this tactic. Confronted by a barrage of questions from journalists recently, he simply told them, 'I wish you and your families a slow and painful death.'

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